On Apr 20, 2011, at 12:29 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-822(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org
[mailto:owner-ietf-822(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Keith
Moore
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 9:25 PM
To: Charles Lindsey
Cc: ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Comments on Malformed Message BCP draft
That's not to say that I want MSAs to forward thoroughly broken
messages; I don't. But once a message leaves the MSA, I think the
opportunity to provide any kind of useful feedback to the submitter has
probably passed.
Where the MSA is under the control of someone that wants to exploit browser
or MUA weaknesses, or doesn't care about standards as long as his/her crap
gets to the inbox, doesn't that view of the world means there's no hope for
improvement?
The only way I see to deal with these cases is for downstream relays or MXes to
bounce or even drop malformed messages. That will weed out those (hopefully
few) MSAs.
(Bouncing such messages won't get many users to change their MUAs. But if
their mail doesn't get through, they will change MSPs. Many users have
multiple email accounts anyway, and "resending from a different email address"
is a common retry strategy.)
Keith