Re: [Exim] Wish list (I think) regarding sender verify callo…

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Dave C. wrote:
>
> > While this is ideal, the problem is its a technical issue that they dont
> > understand, and they 'dont have problems mailing anywhere else', so it
> > must be our problem. Often if its a business with their own server, they
> > either have no admin, or the admin they have isnt really qualified to
> > even understand the issue, let alone fix it. And in some cases some
> > source they trust has told them it heps block spam. In the meantime,
> > your customer that cant get mail from this party is pressuring you to
> > 'fix the problem'...
>
> Translation: if they applied for a franchise to run a postal service,
> they'd be laughed out of the licensing court for their lack of
> technical competence. Yet somehow we're supposed to accept that this
> is normal behaviour on the Internet, much the same as "Korean mail
> servers don't support the postmaster address"?

The problem is they are already running their server. And RFC's are not
actually enforcable as law.

> > Callbacks as an antispam measure can be fantastic, but until a large
> > enough percentage of sites use them to begin pressuring non "<>"
> > accepting MTA's to start doing so, they cant get in the way of otherwise
> > legitimate mail,
>
> Excuse me, but it's not the callbacks that are getting in the way of
> otherwise legitimate mail, it's those badly-configured servers.
> You're saying that under pressure from your users, you're willing to
> break specified procedures. We can't stop anyone from making that

Well, technically the callbacks dont fall under specified procedures
either.

> choice (and occasionally we'd do the same, to be honest - after having
> made a bit of a fuss), but at least let's identify where the fault
> lies.

I'm not arguing where the fault lies, but to paying customers, it doesnt
matter. If their (relatives/friends/customer/etc) cant mail them, while
they can mail everyone else, then they consider it our fault. They dont
want to hear about RFC's, they want us to get them their mail.

> > even if its from a domain whose server is broken that way.
>
> Perhaps we should publish an alternative mail domain, like
> gateway-for-broken-senders.mydomain.example - or can someone think of
> a more-demeaning form of words - and tell those kind of users they
> have to use that until their brokenness has been fixed?

I'm not trying to mandate what you should do with your server. Im only
indicating the conditions under which the servers I run have to live
under.

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