spf-discuss
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Re: [spf-discuss] Fwd: I am not spam! OK, so i am not much better. :(

2006-06-11 08:24:24
On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 10:07:26AM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
On Saturday 10 June 2006 07:03, paddy wrote:
On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 03:08:45PM -0700, 
Matthew(_dot_)van(_dot_)Eerde(_at_)hbinc(_dot_)com wrote:

Yahoo mail or Windows Live mail (nee Hotmail) or GMail are all free, and
the WebMail plugin for Thunderbird works with all of them.

Granted that is the reason why there is little point in using your ISP as
the default option, but if Andy is using this for business, as he
seems to say, then having his own domain would likely make sense.

Yes.  In most business branding is important.  It's one of the reasons as a 
VERY small business (one person) I have my own domain name.

yes, there are many good reasons to be a domain owner, but the aspect I was
focusing on here was portability of email addresses, and the use of SPF.

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 10:07:26AM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
The challenge is that, unless you want to run your own dedicated mail server, 
small businesses are in a bit of a bind with respect to SPF.  Unless you are 
a business big enough to have dedicated staff, are in the e-mail business, or 
are prepared to spend a disproportionate amount of time maintaining and 
monitoring a mail server, it just isn't practical for a small business to run 
dedicated servers.

and On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 02:23:44PM -0400, John Hinton wrote:
Actually all of the above free email services are horrid for business 
use. 
<snip>
If you are a business.. get on a hosting environment designed with 
businesses in mind.. not a cheapy/free hosting (non)service. Have the 
ability to 'talk' to someone who really knows how their mailsystem 
works. Have the ability to have your DNS handled by them and make sure 
they understand and can implement special features like SPF.

yes, that is why I think the suggestion to consider being a domain owner
is a good one: portability.  It puts the power in the hand of the 
owner enabling them to shop about to get what they need, and grow 
when they need to.  Not everyone is going to need specialist email
hosting right away. There would be definite benefits, for little
effort, to Andy having such a domain, and it would enable him to
better deal with his problems, both immediately and in the longer term.

Scott, you go on to talk about cross-user forgery.  I think this is 
an important issue, but I think SPF is very valuable even without
such prevention. Yes, it makes sense to consider such issues in the 
context of whitelisting, but I don't think as black and white as
you put it: there are other issues besides cross-user forgery, 
such as malware, that mean you still have to be carefull with
whitelistsing.

Note that this example shows the little guy authorizing mail from two 
different providers.  At one point SPF got a lot of criticism as a "plot" to 
trap senders into being stuck using only the big players.  I don't know if 
anyone still believes in that, but it's bunk in my book.

I'm not familiar with that criticism, but I agree, it doesn't look that
way to me.

Regards,
Paddy
-- 
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall

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