On Wed, 1 Sep 2004, John Keown wrote:
Seems like the spammers are ahead of spf.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/31/HNspammerstudy_1.html
Unfortunately, neither the reporter nor CypherTrust seem to have a
good grasp of the situation...
"The idea was that SPF would point to legitimate e-mail because spam
would fail SPF checks is not true, because spammers have rolled out
(SPF) records, too. In fact, three times more spam passes SPF checks
that fails it, so passing or failing an SPF check is not a strong
indicator that messages are spam," [CypherTrust CTO Paul Judge] said.
I count at least three major errors of fact and/or logic in this
quote. Apologies for preaching to the choir, and correct me if I'm
wrong:
1. SPF is not designed to "point to legitimate e-mail."
2. "The idea" was never that spam would be guaranteed to fail SPF checks.
3. Regardless of how much spam passes SPF checks, failure is an
*excellent* indicator of forgery (and, by association, spam)
Also, I believe that spammers publishing SPF records for their own
domains *does* have a measurable, if tiny, impact on spam volume,
because some spammers apparently use other spammers' domains in their
forgeries -- at least that's what I seem to be seeing in my SPF stats.
Still, the slow pace of adoption *is* disappointing.
pb
--
paul bissex, e-scribe.com -- database-driven web development
413.585.8095
69.55.225.29
01061-0847
72°39'71"W 42°19'42"N