Re: Lawsuits, angry business users, and SPF stupidity.

Chris Drake wrote:
> Finally, I run a (pay only, non-spam) personal remailler service which
> legitimately maintains the real senders address (and due to MDN/DSN
> standards, must maintain it in the envelope as well as other areas).
> You SPF idea has the potential to (A) Destroy my legitimate business,
The advent of the automobile destroyed the need for horse stables in 
cities. That the nature of innovation, out with the old, in with the new.
> along with everyone else who operates anything similar, and (B) Puts
> me at legal risk due to my customer emails not reaching their intended
> recipients due to your SPF foolishness.  Should I ever get sued, I will
> be forced to try and recover costs from someplace - either the
> recipient ISP, or the SPF software authors (the latter being the most
> likely, since the ISP will hide behind that excuse or risk criminal
> prosecution as well).
Trying to sue the authors of SPF software or the designers of the SPF 
standard, would be the equivalent of trying to sue weapon manufactures 
for murder.
In the end its the ISP's choice to use or not use whatever tools and 
protocols they deam fit to solve a problem. Spam is a problem. SPF is 
working towards making that problem go away with a good idea. If SPF 
works well enough, more ISPs will choose to adopt it.
> And while I'm on the topic - what is the point of SPF??? - connecting
> to the senders MX server and VRFY: or RCPT TO: should solve most
VRFY is disabled in almost all SMTP server software, because it can be 
used to harvest addresses.  There exists SMTP callback software that can 
do some thing like VRFY, but the technique does not scale well for large 
ISPs like AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
--
Anthony C Howe                                 +33 6 11 89 73 78
http://www.snert.com/       ICQ: 7116561         AIM: Sir Wumpus

"...simplicity is a goal of good design,
                     it is never the starting point." - Dan Geer

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