spf-discuss
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RE: Suggest New Mechanism Prefix NUMBER to Accelerate SPF Adoption

2004-08-25 12:34:22
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AccuSpam wrote:
Perhaps no number defaults to "1"?

I'm taking 1 = fully authorized, 0 = totally unauthorized.
"No prefix" defaults to + currently.  + means the same as 1.  So, yes.

Agree except that + is 0 and - is 1 (because I wrote
"probability it is forgery" unless you reverse my definition
which is fine with me), absense any prefix in your suggestion.

Yes, I'm reversing your definition. :)
 
But I do not agree that ~ is 0.5 or that ? is 0.1.

I was thinking on the lines that ~ means "all bets are off" - so
there's a 50% authorization.  From a conditional probability
perspective, conditioning on a 50% chance is a no-op.  Consider a
Bayesian spam content analysis with a token that appears equally in
spam and good email.

I agree that the assignment of 0.1 to ? is arbitrary.  Perhaps ? should
continue to mean SOFTFAIL and not have any probability assigned to it. 
Or perhaps it has probability 0+, or epsilon, for some sufficiently
small value of epsilon. ;)

If the include recursively returned (say) a result of 0.75, that
would be multiplied by the 0.85.


No I would not do that.  That is not mathematically correct.
I would just return the probability of the rule which caused exit
from the SPF rule chain. 

But I don't necessarily trust the included partner as much as I trust
myself.  If I own the included domain, I'd use a prefix of 1, or +, or
leave it out.  That would return your result.  But I'd like to be able
to control the authority I give to my partners to a finer degree than
just "I trust this guy, and that guy, and that guy over there."

Say I trust partner.example.com with 80% probability.  But they
subcontract to subcontractor.example.com with 90% probability of trust.
 My trust of subcontractor.example.com is only (80% * 90%) = 72%.

my.example.com: v=spf2... 0.8include:partner.example.com
partner.example.com: v=spf2... 0.9include:subcontractor.example.com
subcontractor.example.com: v=spf2... mx -all

The mail comes from an MX of subcontractor.example.com.
The receiving mail server does a DNS lookup on my.example.com
Then it cascades through to partner.example.com
        with an attached 0.8
Then it cascades through subcontractor.example.com
        with an attached 0.9 - carry the 0.8 for an effective 0.72
subcontractor.example.com returns PASS (1) for an effective 0.72
overall

This will encourage email providers/partners to rigorously monitor
their sending agents, so they can set their SPF records to
all-ones-and-a-0all

Matthew(_dot_)van(_dot_)Eerde(_at_)hbinc(_dot_)com                      
805.964.4554 x902
Hispanic Business Inc./HireDiversity.com         Software Engineer
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