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[draft-schlitt-spf-classic] Small change in Received-SPF header

2005-01-05 02:56:36
I-D draft-schlitt-spf-classic-00 says:

7.2  The Received-SPF header

   It is RECOMMENDED that SMTP receivers record the result of SPF
   processing in the message headers.  If an SMTP receiver chooses to do
   so, it SHOULD use the "Received-SPF" header defined here. 

But the syntax has a limitation: the header uses :

   result           = "Pass" / "Fail" / "TempError" / "SoftFail" /
                      "Neutral" / "None" / "PermError"

which are not SPF-specific terms. If you use SPF, not for
black-and-white filtering but for input to a bayesian decision
process, these words do not help. I use a different Received-SPF, with
prefixed words (SPF-pass, SPF-fail, etc), which allows bogofilter (the
bayesian filter I use) to learn by itself that SPF failures are
probably spam and that a SPF pass is a good sign:

~ % bogoutil -w .bogofilter/wordlist.db head:SPF-pass head:SPF-fail 
head:SPF-none                                                                   
     
                                 spam   good
head:SPF-pass                       9     17
head:SPF-fail                       1      0
head:SPF-none                      92     61

(Of course, bayesian filters with context could help but I do not
know if they exist.)