Re: Please stop publishing -all it is NOT time yet

Seth Goodman wrote:

> > It is the *receivers* that set up forwarding arrangements, therefore
> > it is *receivers* that need to worry about the situation.  Receivers
> > can do many things, including making sure the *particular* forwarder
> > they use does SRS (or equivalent), are whitelisted via the SPF "local
> > policy" option, or listed on the T-FWL.
> >
> >
> > Once upon a time, I was extremely worried about this forwarding issue.
> > I thought it might be a killer for SPF.  I was *so* worried, that last
> > fall, long before most people had even heard of SPF, I created the
> > trusted-forwarder.org global whitelist (T-FWL) to help deal with this
> > situation.  I expected to be flooded with forwarders that needed to be
> > whitelisted, but it simply has turned out not to be the case in
> > practice.  It appears that the amount of forwarded email on the modern
> > internet is extremely small.
>
> I disagree with that analysis.  IMHO, the lack of major problems with
> forwarders to date has more to do with the lack of recipients who do SPF
> checks.  Forwarding is extremely common and will probably stay that way for
> the foreseeable future.  The reason is simple:  people change email
> providers like they change cell phone companies and they want keep their
> email addresses.  You don't, I don't, and neither does anyone else who owns
> their own domain, but a lot of individual email users depend on this.  Ask
> Meng.  Ask IEEE.org.  Ask the alumni departments of most universities.
> About half of the users on my own little domain have set up forwards to
> places that they prefer to pick up their email from.
Perhaps in other countries, regions, cultures this is different, but the 
people that I know do not change their email address if the do not have 
to. They change the email when they change employment, but private email 
addresses normaly are free email providers (hotmail, GMX or a local 
provider). And if something is free and works ok, why change?
> > It is *because* I'm so involved with the SPF forwarding situation and
> > *because* I have actual data about how often the T-FWL is used, that I
> > have changed my mind.  In practice, forwarding is a very small problem.
> At present, that may well be true as far as SPF is concerned.  But as more
> recipients start to do SPF checks, I believe things will appear quite
> different.  At that point, I think you will be glad you had the foresight to
> start trustedforwarders.org and include the whitelisting features in the
> library.
Even if I do not use trusted forwarders.org (yet?), I agree with Seth, 
trusted forwareders.org is a good idea.
Teddy