In message <Pine.SOL.3.96.970523162540.26553M-100000@???>,
Philip Hazel writes:
> Hmm. Most people want precisely the opposite! The options
> sender_verify_except_{hosts,nets} give you that. Certainly I am not
> interested in receiving messages that have invalid sender addresses.
Let's not forget one very important use of invalid sender addresses
though, namely for preserving anonymity. Invalid sender addresses are
not in themselves bad, and in some circumstances can be guarantors of
freedom and necessary to keep oppression at bay. Not all areas of the
world are as friendly as the west, and some would say that things are
less benign than they at first appear even here. What's important in
an MTA is to be able to allow invalid addresses through if the admin
wishes to do so, while at the same time preventing any such from making
spam if (and ONLY if) the administrator runs a global anti-spam policy.
Hopefully this list is about perfecting the very nice general mechanism
of Exim, not about implementing any specific policy which individual
developers and administrators may have. On this list, the issue should
be not how the developer or administrator feels about spam, but how we
can make Exim implement each ****END USER'S**** spam-filtering wishes.
The Internet is about diversity and choice, not about top-down policies.
One man's spam is another man's useful material, and I have yet to come
across an omniscient administrator, except in his own eyes.
To make Exim a world-beater, we need to concentrate more on individual
control over incoming mail, using a default user config for those that
aren't up to configuring their own. It's the only approach that can
satisy all end users.
Rich.
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