ietf-mxcomp
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Re: Analysis of SPF benefits for reduced filtering

2004-08-10 20:01:27

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Dean Anderson wrote:

It has been reported that AOL is already using SPF to give reduced
filtering to SPF-using domains. Is this a good idea?

Incorrect, see http://postmaster.aol.com/spf/:

---
AOL will begin using SPF records to maintain our whitelist in the near
future. If you want to remain on AOL's whitelist, you will need to
establish an SPF record for your domain as AOL will begin to query
whitelisted IP addresses from a domain's SPF record shortly. Without an
SPF record, your whitelist entries may expire.
---

And you are right, giving *preferred* treatment for successful
authentication (without other tools like a whitelist) is a bad thing to
do.  Subjecting /un-authenticated/ messages to increased scrutiny might be
justified to do though (as Microsoft has announced they will start doing).

-Rand