Re: [Fwd: [Asrg] Verisign: All Your ...

Dean Anderson wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
>
>  
>
> > On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 16:00:47 EDT, Dean Anderson <dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com>  said:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > It never sends the email in either case. In the first case, it will say no
> > > such host, and return an error to the user.  In the second case, it will
> > > attempt to connect to 64.94.110.11 and will get an error, which will be
> > > returned to the MUA.
> > >      
> > So if a domain gets shelved by accident, as happened to one NANOG poster
> > this weekend, all their mail gets sucked up and handed a 5xx error by the
> > Verisign server and bounced, rather than getting hit with a 4xx and retried
> > for a few days.
> >    
> As was pointed out, some servers will give up right away.  In either case,
> the user should get a bounce, and can follow the instructions as to
> whether the delivery will be retried or not.
No. On once case your get a "no such host" error and never send the 
email in the first place
and the other case gets a bounce. Not the same thing.

I manage a site that sends mortgage documents. It NEEDS to be sure that 
the destination
is valid before sending confidential information. So the first time a 
new e-mail address
is allowed to send the very sensitive information to a new email address 
it looks up the
host and submits the initial message itself.  So unless I want to parse 
every possible
error text the bogus verisign SMTP server may say, I had to hack the 
code so that it knows
that the IP address provided by Verisign means no such host and never 
sends the confidential
information to a site that may be using the information in a way that is 
in conflict with the
senders confidentially requirements.

Same with health / HIPPA issues. Saying I'll take your email and bounce 
it back is not
the same as saying "hey bozo, you are trying to send to a bogus host name".

The email may be encrypted, however that is not sufficient for some usage's.

--

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