On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Alex van den Bogaerdt wrote:
Maybe you should stop thinking about bits and bytes, and start
talking to end users. After all, we're making the infrastucture not
for Julian Mehnle but for the general public.
Before SPF, if some MTA configuration was screwed up so that an
email couldn't be delivered, the email would be REJECTED so that
the end user would get a DSN. Hopefully the DSN was intelligible
to an end user, but even if it wasn't, they would just call tech
support asking what the computerese means. I know, because my company
handled thousands of such problems long before SPF was invented.
Now that SPF is one more configuration that can be screwed up by mail
admins, the proper thing to do when an email cannot be delivered because
of SPF fail, is to REJECT it so that the end user gets a DSN - just like for
any other email problem. Hopefully, the DSN is intelligible to the end user
(hah!), but even if it isn't, they will just call tech support asking what
the stuff about SPF means. I know, because we have handled dozens of
such problems since installing SPF.
Generally, after learning that SPF verifies that the email is sent
from an authorized IP, they are very happy, having been very annoyed
getting countless spams from themselves and viruses from colleagues who
are on vacation with their PC turned off. (And of course we either
help the competent mail admins fix their servers or install local policy
workarounds for those who won't.)
The complaints we get are not from end users, but from incompetent mail admins
who won't even give their MTAs an RFC compliant HELO name, much less
actually learn how email works or change what they are doing.
--
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.