On 2012/06/10 09:41 PM, SM wrote:
[snip]
Have you considered using ARF (RFC 5965)? Please also see some of the
work from the IETF MARF working group.
I hadn't considered utilising ARF here. While incoming complaints do
typically contain the whole mail or at least all headers, an automated
system would not require so much data. In my case relayed mails are kept
in a retrievable format for at least a few days. In theory, I only need
very few of the headers of a mail in order to find the full content,
perhaps even only one header. A full report in ARF format is far too
much information when all I really want is enough information to
know/determine:
a) A recipient reckons the mail was spam
b) The account responsible for having sent the mail
Having gone through all of the IETF MARF working group's draft
documents, ARF is a MIME format for reports and does not define how the
reports are to be sent. I like the concept however, per above, it seems
inappropriate, perhaps even superfluous. The working group is looking
towards utilising DNS in order to determine reporting mechanisms and
protocols. Again, this appears far too complicated for reporting spam.
Legitimate bulk mail services are already successfully using simple
headers and unique IDs. Typically their "unsubscribe" and
"report-as-spam" links embedded in the headers and in the mail itself
all use the same ID with only the URL being slightly different, for
example /unsubscribe?id=xyz and /report?id=xyz. This has required
minimal investment and research for the providers to implement yet, in
theory, it already achieves a reporting mechanism that can be automated.
The only hindrance with this type of reporting is critical mass and
standardisation. I'm not aware of any two bulk mail services that use
the same format or header.
A concern I'm looking at is development time and achievable results. How
many days and lines of code will it take to implement a server-side
report-as-spam header (and corresponding support in MUAs) vs
implementing the reporting mechanisms the IETF MARF Working Group are
working on?
--
Brendan Hide
http://swiftspirit.co.za/
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