----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex van den Bogaerdt" <alex(_at_)ergens(_dot_)op(_dot_)het(_dot_)net>
To: <spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] Re: RFC 2821 and responsibility for forwarding
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 08:54:14AM -0500, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>Just a small comment here -
>
>Surely a forwarder *is* a sender - he receives an e-mail and re-injects
>it
>into the system - with various manglings of the headers according to his
>whim. The re-injection of an e-mail is "sending" an e-mail - therefore
>he
>is a sender.
No. He's not. He didn't write it: he didn't create the content, he
shouldn't get the bounce message or the time-outs if it fails, his
postmaster doesn't want to see most of the types of error messages. Your
perception of it is common and not unreasonable, but I think it's
mistaken.
The comment was: "forwarder is sender"
You reply: "he didn't write it"
In other words, you think the author is the sender. This is a wrong
perception.
Authors write, senders send.
The author wrote it. The author sent it, so he is also the sender.
Therefore, ideally, he should get the bounce message, which is why the
forwarder pretends to be the sender. Yes, this model has deep problems in
its use since leaving the wold open to this kind of unverifiable and
untestable forwarding leaves the world open to exactly identical appearing
email forgeries.
And yes, this is important. The forwarding machine may be allowed to send
a message authored by me, it may not pretend to >be me< while sending.
Perhaps, but this is how email reflectors (or more commonly known as
forwarding) works right now. Saying "it may not do this" has nothing to do
with what you, as a sender of email, desire. It has to do what what the
recipient desires to have happen to his email. You as a sender have little
to no control over this.
The forwarding entity is responsible for the message and should receive
the bounce, not the author of the message.
Nope. In most legitimate cases they can't or shouldn't even try to do
anything about it, and it's the original sender's mistake or problem to fix.
They didn't send it, they don't want to know what's in it, they're just
politely passing it along.