mail-vet-discuss
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Re: [mail-vet-discuss] what's the purpose of A-R?

2007-10-15 10:35:06
In other words, if you have a gmail account and a yahoo account, there
is no reason to believe that either gmail or yahoo will see the other's
messages unless you are forwarding one to the other.

Well, duh. That's why you can only believe a gmail AR header from the gmail account, and a yahoo header from a yahoo account unless you know enough about the paths between them to know what's a real forward and what isn't. If you have a third mailbox that doesn't do AR at all, you probably need to ignore all the headers that account might send you, gmail, yahoo, or otherwise. That's why I've been saying over and over and over that an AR message is only credible if it arrived via a good path. Tying the header name to the account is one way to do that BUT NOT THE ONLY WAY, and in setups more complicated than your end user sitting at the end of a VPN to HQ, often not even a feasible way.

To remedy that situation you have to leave a gaping security hole for all others.

Sigh. Only if everyone involved are complete idiots. We seem to have dealt adequately with the problem of forged received headers. Why do you insist that the same people who can do that can't deal with forged AR headers?

Because it can do harm if done wrong.  Providing a false sense of
security is not helpful.

I guess I hold people in less contempt than you do.

If I sound extremely frustrated, it's because I am. Your argument boils down to saying that since everyone else isn't as smart as you are and their mail setup is more complicated than yours, it's too dangerous to give them better tools.

R's,
John
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