Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: VGER does gradual SPF activation (FAQ matter) | From | Alan Cox <> | Date | Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:53:24 +0100 |
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Ar Llu, 2006-06-12 am 10:18 +0200, ysgrifennodd Bernd Petrovitsch: > No. SPF simply defines legitimate outgoing MTAs for a given domain.
No it does not. If it did it would be almost a usable idea, but it fails because the ISP generally controls the definition and the users are more mobile so they want to send via other paths too. Going via the users home box is often impractical because of firewalls and also ISP controls like dynamic IP. It is a technical solution to the wrong problem because it was designed by people some of whom are ignorant of the real world and the other half of whom saw it as a differentiator and a further profit potential.
Spammers *love* SPF because they can register 30 day knock down unpaid domains and people score them as non spam.
ISPs *love* SPF because they can enforce policies that allow them to charge even more to users who want to do anything interesting. The fact many of them don't allow users to control their own domain SPF or get a fixed SPF pointing at the ISP mailhost only is not entirely that they haven't gotten around to fixing it either.
The people who suffer from SPF are unfortunately the users. The people its alleged to stop like it. The people it is alleged to help run filters get richer and the users get screwed.
For Vger it isn't too bad, it'll just break all the people relaying or cc'ing vger mail to an ISP account, and probably those people Cc'ing it to some HTML based list archiving sites.
I find Matti's comments about "first-class citizens" distasteful. What do you want Matti, a world where you have to be "<--- this --->" 'L33T to post email ? Knowledge and responsibility are not the same thing, as usenet Approved headers showed.
SPF *would* be wonderful if the users controlled SPF handling and someone fixed the forwarding flaws in it, but neither is the case today.
Alan
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