Someone was saying on-list that the objective of SPF isn't to reduce spam.
I was just discussing that subject off-list. If MTA authorization doesn't
reduce spam, there is little purpose to the MARID WG, as the MARID charter
indicates.
--Dean
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:48:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dean Anderson <dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com>
To: Alan DeKok <aland(_at_)ox(_dot_)org>
Subject: Re: How is SPF different from RMX?
On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, Alan DeKok wrote:
Yep. But so far you haven't met any goal of reducing spam.
Since that was never the goal in the first place, I can't for the
life of me figure out why you keep repeating that. You're not stupid,
so you must have understood that was never the goal: I said so, and
the RMX, etc. documents said so. I guess the only answer is that you
are saying this for non-reality-based reasons.
FYI: from the MARID charter
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/marid-charter.html
"This will help combat a certain class of domain forgery common in spam.
The solution chosen, however, should be generally useful for others which
might check this authorization data.
This working group is being chartered after extensive discussion of
the issues in the IRTF's Anti-spam Research Group, and it is presumed
that all active participants will be familiar with the documents
produced there which describe the problem. It is not, however, an
extension of that research group; it has no general writ to study spam
or to produce specifications on the topic. It will not consider
anti-spam abatement measures outside of the area of MTA authorization."
Reducing spam is a goal of the MARID group. Failure to achieve that goal
is a failure of MARID. As my examples show, Email forgery is still
possible.
--Dean