On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Dick St.Peters wrote:
Stuart D. Gathman writes:
The recivier *already* knows whether the message has been forwarded,
because they set up the forwarder! If the recipient is so disorganized
that they have lost track of their aliases (or an ISP has no mechanism
for users to enter them), then they can't (correctly) reject on SPF fail
(unless they don't care about those old forgotten aliases bouncing).
Don't be so naive. "Recipient" and "receiver" aren't the same. A
recipient may know his or her mail is being forwarded, but the
receiver mail system that is supposed to make a decision before DATA
usually has no idea what mail is being forwarded to it and what isn't.
I run one of the world's tiniest ISPs, but I still receive mail for,
and send mail from, hundreds of users with hundreds of domains.
Dozens of those users have their mail forwarded from here to other
mail systems - or to here from other mail systems. A mere handful of
those users with forwarded mail are savvy enough about how mail works
to know their mail is forwarded. The rest have simply asked to get
their mail at some preferred email account, and been told "Yes, we can
make that happen."
You are doing fine. Your recipients asked you for a forwarding alias,
and you gave it to them. If they turn around and check SPF for the
mail they get from you at their new destination, then they are going to have
problems - but it is not your fault. You should go ahead and check SPF
yourself, except for recipients that may have forwarded mail to YOU
and not told you about it.
As for forwarding to the cable internet service, getting them to
whitelist a small competitor is vastly less likely than getting them
to give a customer a PTR record, and we know how unlikely that is. So
forget all this nonsense about recipients whitelisting forwarders.
For the overwhelming majority of recipients it just ain't gonna
happen.
If her ISP is checking SPF without her asking (and without asking her
for forwarders), and rejecting on SPF FAIL, then her ISP is BROKEN.
Since, as you say, you likely can't get them to fix it (I've been there),
you are forced to use SRS as workaround for a broken receiver. This
is not a problem with SPF, but with a braindead receiver. SRS is
a workaround for when you can't get them to fix it already.
In the real world, most of the advice here on how to overcome various
problems with SPF essentially comes down to "Don't use SPF", which is
strange for group of supposed SPF advocates.
More accurately, you can't do *strict* SPF, whether sending or receiving,
without completely identifying *all* means of receiving / sending email.
If that is not feasible at the moment, then yes, you must be satisfied
with "relaxed" SPF. But we here want you to meet the requirements
and upgrade to "strict" as soon as possible.
--
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.
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