spf-discuss
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Re: Re: [SPF v1 Draft] Last chance before I submit...

2004-10-13 06:43:57
Hello!

Thanks for your reply.

On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 09:36:53AM -0400, Theo Schlossnagle wrote:
Hannah Schroeter wrote:

About 75% of the SPF records in the .com TLD end in -all.  I would say
that it is the current practice, although certainly not the
universally adopted practice.

Have I missed something (specifically, a solution for that already in
widespread implementation and deployment) or do they just ignore the
forwarding problem?

A vast majority (the common man) has no forwarding set up at all.

Not necessarily true. Many of our (the company I work at) customers
use forwarding functionality. And while we will eventually implement
something like SRS, this hasn't already happened.

[...]

The "problems" with SPF -all clearly effect the technical community more 
than the non-technical community.  And the technical community has the 
ability to fix it by deploying things like SRS.

Which is still quite new, so while it may be ok in the longer term,
it's a bit premature to use "-all" already while SRS or similar
practices are not yet in widespread implementation (i.e. all the
providers who offer forwarding functionality at least).

And in an earlier mail I pointed out the length problems with SRS, with
an example that wasn't completely unrealistic, but noone replied to
that.

So my point is: Right now, -all is premature and I'd prefer the
recommendation to be ?all or ~all, the latter of which already offers
the possibility to score mails lower or similar if not from authorized
relays, but not to outrightly reject it. Rejection would be too harsh
a measure as long as solutions for the forwarding problem, like SRS,
aren't (yet) in widespread implementation.

Kind regards,

Hannah.