Reading about this episode it reads to me like a case for SPF.
It is solvable, but requires state to be maintained on a per user profile
basis. I don't see this as very bad since you need to pull up a profile
anyway to do the job right.
Phill
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
[mailto:owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com] On Behalf Of
Stuart
D. Gathman
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 11:06 AM
To: spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
Subject: RE: [spf-discuss] A Cautionary Tale concerning AOL
On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Brian Barrios wrote:
One thing that AOL screwed up on: they drop the connection rather
than issuing a 5xx status. The end user sees "connection dropped,
This is incorrect. No connections are ever dropped in an effort to
fight spam. I obviously cannot claim connections are never
dropped,
but if we want to block your mail, we just do so, we never
attempt to
hide this fact. For that matter, no email is ever silently deleted
either. All email is either blocked, (ie, issued a 421,
554, 550) or
delivered. However, I will
Good to know the connection drop wasn't intentional. But we
did observe just that over the course of a week. I want to
reiterate that the
reputation tracking feature of AOL is a good one - the
problem was the end users unfiltered forward.
SPF could make the system work the way the end user expected.
If AOL's reputation tracking went by domain instead of IP
for domains that pass SPF, and also extracted the original
domain from SRS forwarded mail, then this end user could use
the AOL spam filter without interfering with other mail from
her company.
BTW, shortly after posting my complaint, AOL started
accepting this customers mail again. Most likely, the
demerits decay over time, but it reminded me of working with
the local phone company: they insist that their testing shows
that there is no problem with your line (despite no packets
getting sent either way), but 30 minutes after they hang up,
T1 carrier drops for a moment and it starts working again. :-)
--
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.
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