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Re: Re: RFC 2821 and responsibility for forwarding

2004-12-07 06:01:54

----- 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: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] Re: RFC 2821 and responsibility for forwarding


On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 10:40:31AM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:

Why not? There are plenty of alternatives to SPF which don't have this
problem with forwarding, and which offer all the same benefits as SPF,
but without the need to change forwarding practice.

I mail you, you forward to you2, you2 forward to you3.  You3 tries
to forward to you4 but fails.  You3 will sent the bounce to me.

Why? Because you2 forged my address.  I did WRITE the message but
I did not SEND it (from you2 to you3).

I already explained that I do not expect nor want a bounce from
you3.  I may not even be able to communicate (for _whatever_ reason)
with you3.

And Alex, you're a nice guy, but you're just plain weird. In almost all such cases people want to know about the bounce ASAP, because it means their email didn't get through. They don't care much whether the bounce is at the forwarding SMTP server or the final target SMTP server.

If I send a real letter to you, and you leave a forwarding address but it can't be delivered because your house burned down, should that mail wind up sitting at the first post office? No. The chain of SMTP servers along the way to the recipient is relevant to we who keep them working, but most senders simply don't care. They just want their email to get there, and by implication they want to know when it fails. Your approach to forwarding badly breaks that information and dumps responsibility for it on the people least likely to know how to fix it, the admins at the forwarding SMTP server.

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