On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Seth Goodman wrote:
I don't think I understand what the case is for "never" looking inside the
envelope. Even mail that is otherwise accepted, it is still going through
SpamAssassin or a Bayesian filter. In fact if someone is offering me a
message, why should I exclude myself from scrutinizing anything in that
message before deciding to accept it? Presumably, the sender wants the end
recipient to read the body, but somehow wants to prevent he MTA from reading
the body? I'm obviously misunderstanding something.
This is simply a case of labels. I believe the OP is happy to look inside the
envelope - but doesn't want to call the software that does so
an "MTA". In his mind, the term "MTA" refers to the software that
delivers messages inside envelopes that it never opens.
Admittedly, when the MTA has an extension protocol (e.g. sendmail milter)
that does in fact look inside the envelope, the distinction becomes
blurred. But it is still a useful distinction. It is much better
design if the core MTA confines itself to delivering envelopes, and leaves
SPF, RFC2822 checking, filtering and other stuff to extension modules.
--
Stuart D. Gathman <stuart(_at_)bmsi(_dot_)com>
Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.