Re: SPF Record ...

Am Freitag, 17. November 2006 14:24 schrieb Marc G. Fournier:
> 'k, so the problem isn't SPF, but the fact that its not widely adopted and
> used ... so, let's *not* adopt it and increase its usage?

The problem is that the collateral damage imposed by SPF by far outweighs the
benefits, so informed people don't use it. In addition, the benefits are
solely on the provider side and the damage is mostly on the user side, so as
a matter of providing quality service, sensible ISPs wouldn't use it.

> Where you are losing me here is how this 'worse service' manifests itself
> ... I can understand some cases where this would be the case (a university
> campus where students send email while off campus), but for smaller
> organizations (and I'm sorry, but for the number of mailboxes under
> @postgresql.org, we are a small organization email wise), being able to
> impose some sort of policy (even with a small exceptions list), shouldn't
> cause a degredation in service ...

Certainly you can doctor up endless exceptions, if you are prepared to
speedily integrate the evolving list of mail servers that I choose to use.
But I don't see why such complications would be necessary. SPF doesn't solve
any problems that I can recognize, or for that matter that you have defined
here.

In more broader terms, this is a matter of principle. There are already too
many supposedly good ideas around that disturb email traffic and Internet
privacy. I don't see why you want to be on the forefront of making things
worse.

> You lost me on this one (or I mis-read Magnus' email) ... but, you can't
> use IMAP/POP3 to read hotmail, only their webmail interface ... so, the
> only way to send an email out as an @hotmail.com address *legitimately*
> would be *thrrough* their servers

That is only true for some new definition of "legitimate" which I'm interested
to learn.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/