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Re: [ietf-dkim] Are lookalike domains like parent domains?

2008-04-30 08:44:06
Assume, say, one million people who regularly receive valid emails
from their bank (info(_at_)accounts(_dot_)bigbank(_dot_)com). If they 
received an email
from info(_at_)mail(_dot_)account(_dot_)bigbank(_dot_)com, how many of them 
would believe the
email is really from the bank?

I assure you, lots.  Through liberal use of sub-domains via email and 
web sites end users have been trained to ignore the sub-domain part 
(since it frequently changes) and to focus on the "root domain" part 
(which is constant and they either trust or don't trust).

Well, now we have another question -- who's going to be using ADSP, mail 
system operators or end users?  It's always been my impression that the 
main audience is MTA operators, who will use it in filtering decisions.

MTA operators will be using/deploying ADSP.  End-users are the intended 
beneficiary (as is the case with _all_ filtering systems).  The 
motivation driving MTA operators to deploy ADSP is end-user protection.

If it's for end users, my experience says that they are equally likely to 
be fooled by info(_at_)accounts-bigbank(_dot_)com, which would suggest we've 
been 
wasting our time.

I agree with the first part of what you've said but the second part does 
not follow logically.  One can not claim that because we fail to protect 
a user completely we therefore aren't able to provide any protection at 
all and have thus wasted our time.  ADSP isn't attempting to solve the 
accounts-bigbank.com problem.  But it does solve the foo.bigbank.com 
problem.  This is wonderful news and a welcome step forward.

Arvel



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