In <20040520182720(_dot_)GW4206(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com> Meng Weng
Wong <mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com> writes:
The New SPF adds a "Responsible From" parameter:
As a sneak preview, suppose your email had:
From: <mengwong(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>
Sender: <mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com>
When that message is sent over SMTP, in The New SPF, mail would show up as:
MAIL FROM:<mengwong(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com> SIZE=1000
RFROM=<mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com>
So, what is RFROM? RFROM's heritage comes from Caller-ID. Caller-ID
I am not at all convinced that it will be easier to get the FRED (aka
RFROM) ESMTP extention adopted than it would be to get all email
forwarders to do SRS (or similar.)
All forwarders will need to update their MTA software to support the
RFROM extention. That's fine, 'cause the alternative is for all of
them to update their MTA software to support SRS. We aren't giving
mail forwarders a choice in either case. They can't just say "I don't
want to do Caller-ID/SPF so I don't want to upgrade my software."
However, with the FRED extention, we are requiring the receivers to
also update their MTAs. One claim I heard was that this was only
needed if the receivers were doing Caller-ID/SPF, but that is not
true. SpamAssassin on your home machine will support SPF just fine,
even if comcast/roadrunner don't change their MTAs. This is going to
require everyone with an MTA to upgrade.
Our experience on this list is that there are indeed some email
forwarders that don't want to do SRS and have complained here.
However, we have had just as many, if not more complaints about the
greeting-card/send-news-article sites. The greeting-card sites will
have to change under both SRS and the FRED ESMTP extention.
As many of you know, I run the trusted-fowarder.org global whitelist.
The amount of forwarders is something I have looked into quite a bit
and am very often informed about.
My point here is that I really don't think the forwarding issue is as
big a problem as people make it out to be.
I think we have given up the immediate adoption of SpamAssassin 3.00
using SPF for the very long term adoption of the FRED SMTP extention.
-wayne