ietf-smtp
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Re: Multi-Line Greetings A Certainty?

2010-02-14 23:44:42

Sabahattin Gucukoglu wrote:

Hi all,

I imagine it's more of an implementation robustness issue to support multiline greetings 
given the current text of RFC 5321.  However, Postfix's new postscreen daemon, docs 
http://www.postfix.org/postscreen.8.html , seems to be relying on it to do its job.  Also 
does something else disturbing (in typical Postfix experimental fashion) which is to 
disconnect clients just for not liking the initial "Teaser" banner.  According 
to the STANDARDS section, this is RFC 5321-stipulated stuff.  According to my experience, 
yeah, probably works for short enough timeouts, and I've seen plenty multiline greetings 
in the wild ...

I don't like spam either, but does this not strike others as being really quite 
dangerous thinking and uncertain games to be playing?

Cheers,
Sabahattin

Only the good guys complain when are problems, not bad guys.

Per 8 years of on-going daily statistics, ~5-8% drop because they don't understand multi-line responses. There are all bad guys with a two exceptions in the past, both good guys who quickly fixed their bug once they were made aware. No one needed to be shamed and a serious implementation is stubborn to fix it, they should be shamed. Its not your problem, its theirs.

A server could of course have an connection IP whitelist to avoid sending extended welcome responses. But the problem isn't with known associations, its the anonymous world that is a plaque.

In my opinion, one of the strongest defense against spam is enforcing or mandating SMTP compliance. Once you relax, it invites problem and uncertainty.

--
Sincerely

Hector Santos
http://www.santronics.com

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