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RE: [ietf-dkim] The problem with sender policy

2006-08-07 09:49:15

[mailto:ietf-dkim-bounces(_at_)mipassoc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of John L

It's true, I don't, and I've been trying to figure out why 
not.  It finally came to me: senders are not the right people 
to judge their own importance.

True but senders can state whether:

1) They have been accredited as a financial institution
2) They have been a target of phishing attacks

And most importantly

3) Whether they sign all their outgoing email or not.


When I think of SSP records saying dump mail if it's not 
signed, I see a bunch of tiny gorillas*, beating their teensy 
chests and saying in high squeaky voices, "Beware, oh 
Internet, of the Scourge of Criminals attempting to forge the 
image of my Inestimable Personage, and do not DARE to be 
fooled by these Base Mockeries of Communication!"  The only 
reasonable response from everyone else is somewhere between 
"Huh?" and "Get real."

The fact that a few chimps might try to use the mechanism does not mean that 
there are no gorillas with legitimate reasons to do so.

All that policy does is to describe the sender's outgoing email configuration 
and possibly provide some description of the sender.

This has almost nothing to do with what a third party might do in this area. It 
makes little sense to attach accreditation records to the domain, they should 
attach to the key record.


Speaking as the Principal Scientist of the largest Internet accreditation 
provider (larger than the members of DAC put together) I do not see a reason 
why third party accreditation should be preferred over self-accreditation for 
the negative accreditations in this particular instance.

If someone is saying something positive about themselves then that is something 
that you probably want to have a third party there to provide an independent 
view. If on the other hand someone is making a statement of the form 'I am not 
trustworthy' or 'Anyone who fails to authenticate as me is not me' then self 
accreditation works fine and is a necessary compliment to giving the TTP 
asserted positive assertions value.


If the ABA or the FDIC published a list of domains used by 
member banks to send signed transactional mail, I would find 
that really useful.  A list of people who think they are as 
threatened by forgery as those banks is useless other than 
for entertainment value.

That is a parochial view. The ABA is not an international organization and 
shows no inclination to repeat the routing number role. 

Unless you can provide an active member of these organizations who says that 
they want to do this role the suggestion is futile. My interactions with 
bankers through the APWG strongly suggests that they do not want this role.


So that's the problem with SSP.  Whatever your policy is, 
unless you're someone I already have reason to be interested 
in, I don't care.

While it is true that I may wish to obtain additional information before 
acting, a mechanism that signals to me that there may be such information to 
find is still useful.

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