ietf-mxcomp
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Let senders pick identities

2004-03-27 19:23:05

I am going to take a different angle at the problem. Instead of specified configuration information or identity information, lets turn this around and say that by publishing MARID records the sender is making statements about his email. Since this will be used mainly for whitelisting, the truth of these statements can be used as part of the process.

The problem with RFC2822 checking as being discussed is that we are afraid of the MARID data being used for such checking when the sender clearly does not want that to happen. To avoid that, just let the sender pick what he wants but that would imply that his email is compliying with these statements.

If so, the sender will list a bunch of IP addresses or provide MTA MARK records, with the following statements: 1. HELO - expect all mail that uses my domain name in the HELO parameter to come from these IP addresses. 2. MAIL FROM - expect all mail that uses my domain in MAIL FROM to come from these IP addresses. 3. in-addr-arpa - expect all email from a given IP to be legit or nonlegit, or perhaps tied to a domain. 4. RFC2822 - expect all email from my domain to have non-forged "From" headers.

This is no mere suggestions for verifications, rather the domain/IP owner is stating to the world that his email has these parameters and if they are not fulfilled, then the emails are forged. HOWEVER, if the sender is stating that MAIL FROM is non-forged, that does not mean that you can do "from" verification. This way there is no guessing about what happens - rather the sender is stating clearly what his email should look like and what is should not look like. This gives everybody their cake and opporunity to eat it too.

This way we don't have to choose among identities, rather we will seek to make a mechanism that will emcompass all of them. The sender will be free to use any of these to make statements about his email, as opposed to have the sender and receiver guess.

Thoughts?

Yakov


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