Re: Can we please refuse mail to the list from list addresses?

On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 03:04:48PM -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> Wait, I think we're talking two different things here ... at least, I hope JD
> is ... SMTP AUTH is required to send email *through* any of our servers, except

Aha.

> MX ... but, what Magnus was proposing would have required CMD to setup their
> MTA to do an SMTP AUTH to postgresql.org's MTA to send @postgresql.org ...

Well, this is possible, but it does make the mail server admin rather more
troublesome.

>
> ie. if joshua(at)postgresql(dot)org sent out email, it would deliver to his local MTA,
> with his local MTA connecting to postgresql.org MTA, who would then deliver it
> out to the world ...

Right. In the anti-spam world these days, very few people are doing reverse
matching (that is, very few people compare the reverse lookup of the From:
address to the domain of the MTA whence the mail is coming). It'll be
interesting to see what happens as SPF or DKIM -- the two loaded foot-guns
of the mail world -- take off, because then signing practices will start to
be important, and I suspect we'll find that mail not signed with the right
keys will all be classed as spam anyway. So then you'll _have_ to use the
domain's own mail servers, or things won't be signed correctly (because I
assume that we're not going to be sharing the server's private keys widely
:-)

A

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Andrew Sullivan
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