spf-discuss
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Re: [spf-discuss] solving the forwarding problem

2005-09-12 06:42:06
Julian Mehnle wrote:

Theo Schlossnagle wrote:

Sorry you talk abou the receiver that uses the alias and a receiver who
controls their inbound mail setup as the same person.  They hardly ever
are.  One is a user and the other is a mail exchange administrator.
One does not have control over what the other does.


"Users" neither publish nor check SPF records.  Domain owners publish,
and
receivers check.  Receivers are MTA admins, too, so they clearly should
be knowledgeable enough to at least understand (if not control) their (or
their users') forwarding setups, and thus be able to correctly configure
their MTAs.

Right, users (as stated above) is the entity that "uses the alias".  And
I wasn't speaking of the recievers forwarding set up -- that is
irrelevant.  I'm talking about the one or more forwarders in the middle
that don't deploy SPF because of its issues.  Those hops are forwarding
mail and understand their forwarding configuration just fine -- though
it is visible to neither the sending admin or the final receiving admin.

I guess you're now going to claim that receiver MTA admins cannot easily
know their users' forwarding setups in the general case.  I concede that
this may traditionally be the case, but I claim that there is no
fundamental obstacle keeping receiver MTA admins from communicating with
their users, either manually or through some technical mechanism with
which the users can easily configure their incoming forwardings to their
mailbox hoster.  This is not rocket science.

That's what I was saying the first place.  And I agree that it is not
rocket science.  However, companies want to reduce the cost of email. 
Requiring MTA admin to communicate with their users to discuss something
that their users likely don't really understand will increase costs
dramatically.  Money will have to be spent writing policy and
producedure guidelines for these communications.  This is a serious cost
for corporates.

-- 
// Theo Schlossnagle
// Principal Engineer -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// Ecelerity: Run with it. -- http://www.omniti.com/

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