ietf-mta-filters
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Re: Spam blowback from Sieve implementations.

2006-11-28 14:15:38

Hi Barry,

--On November 28, 2006 9:19:46 AM -0500 Barry Leiba <leiba(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com> wrote:

Like Matthew, I would like to VERY VERY STRONGLY DISCOURAGE the use of
Sieve scripts to generate MDNs.  But I understand the situation Chris
describes, and I agree that we shouldn't pull this out from under
customers that expect it to work this way.

Why are we making a decision in SIEVE WG that MDNs are bad? Surely this is something that we need to take to the general email community first before we make such a statement through our actions. Really I dislike the fact that we are removing a feature from our protocol that serves a valid purpose just to try and alleviate a problem that frankly won't go away because a few sieve implementations change. There is much more useful anti-spam work being done elsewhere that will better address this type of situation.

What I think we should do is simply recognize that a protocol level reject is a useful feature missing from SIEVE, and allowing a user or implementation to control whether they do that or issue an MDN is a good thing.

Discouraging the use of MDNs as a means of avoiding blow back is really not our job.

--
Cyrus Daboo