On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 14:26 -0400, Terry Fielder wrote:
Mark Shewmaker wrote:
Please don't let the fact that few ESPs other than pobox offer
cross-user forgery protections.
Wow, I had a bit of bad editing there! Obviously that should be
"..limit the spec from assigning a useful meaning to pass."
I am concerned because the ISP sees no real benefit from preventing
cross customer forgery (financial or publicity).
Many years ago AOL saw now real benefit financial or publicity-wise in
having their customers be able to email in and out of their network, or
providing their customers internet access, or even providing their
customers usenet access.
You could go to comdex or other shows, go to an AOL both, ask about
these things, and be told point blank that they see no use in providing
any of these features now or in the foreseeable future. They would even
go into detail about it, demonstrating that they understood these other
optiobns.
However, the networking standards were out there and continuing to
build, and after folks finally got just a glimmering of a hint of just a
few advantages of just the most limited type of open-standards network
interoperability, suddenly things changed practically overnight.
Now, many, many years after that sudden sea-change, it's almost
unfathomable for someone to even consider providing a closed network
environment as a public service without very good reasons.
We're still at the point where most of us are in a state of dispair at
the state of email security, but that common state of poor security will
not last forever, it just seems that way now because that's the time in
which we're currently living.
But it will change at some point, and when it changes, it will change
pretty quickly.
There's no point in forcing SPFv1 to be stuck for all time into some
meaning that (incorrectly, IMHO), seems to make sense in this
between-time in which people don't care about email security, when it
can be made to still make sense once ESPs come to their senses.
Perhaps I should change my vote from #2 too "neutral" :)
Heh. :-)
--
Mark Shewmaker
mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com