From: Brad Templeton <brad(_at_)templetons(_dot_)com>
...
Reporting errors back to legit bulk mailers -- again, in aggregate --
is easy because they use legit headers and a unified from. In
fact most MTAs do this already.
All conformant MTAs report errors, but not really in the aggregate, and
that is a good thing. Legitimate bulk mail senders need to know
which addresses are broken to clean their lists.
Giving up the principles of good software engineering and protocol
design, so that messages don't vanish into black holes with no
diagnostics should be one of our last-resort choices. There are many
stories from the anti-spam wars of people whose (valid) mail was just been
silently discarded who only found out about it by accident.
true.
And let's not forget that open relay operators are victims of the
spammers. It may be necessary to close those relays, but they are
still the victim, not the perp.
That is not right. People who operate relays may be less culpable than
the original senders of spam, but they are certainly blame worthy
and they are certainly not victims in the same class as spam targets.
Relay operators can suffer greater harm tham individual spam targets, but
relay operators must be held accountable.
Besides, it is impossible to distinguish willful spam relaying from
other sorts. Spammers have been hiring relays since soon after the
beginning when Spamford recruited what he called his bandwidth partners.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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