spf-discuss
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Re: [spf-discuss] advice wrong, or is it?

2007-12-21 07:15:33
On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 10:04:27AM +0000, Peter Bowyer wrote:

Note:  they say "~all" is good, "-all" is not.


I found this here:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33786

It depends on what your goal is.  If you want to deter spammers from using
your domains, then -all is a good idea.

OK, now please explain why someone would want to use ~all as google
suggests?  Yeah, sure, while testing it is OK, but thereafter ?

Probably because adopters of Google's SAAS email service typically do
so gradually rather than 'big-bang', and during transition (or perhaps
even permanently) still send email from their 'legacy' systems as well
as from Gmail. They'll have a history of support tickets around this,
which will have led to the ~all advice.

OK, I can agree to this for a part. However, when sending a message from
the wrong host, the amount of rejection may be lower but still significant.

What's worse:
* Two receivers, and you know both use SPF.
* You send a message to both
* One is rejected, the other is not
It is easy to think you need to look at something else than your SPF policy.


And, without further explanation, people who otherwise would have
chosen -all, not only willingly but also for a good reason, may now
have second thoughts just because google says so.  They don't know
why what they think is wrong (it isn't!!!) but if google says so...


Perhaps that last point is the most important. There's enough FUD coming
from another source, we don't need google to chip in.

Alex

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