At 20:56 +0000 2003/11/03, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
>On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 07:29:17PM +0100, Giuliano Gavazzi wrote:
>> At 17:43 +0000 2003/11/03, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
>> [...]
>> >did what the DNS told me to do." If you break the cooperation, you're no
>> >better than the spammers, in many ways, and I'll know that I don't want
>> >to accept mail from you, because I'll be unlikely to be able to report
>> Matthew, you have singlehandedly destroyed your own argument...
>
>If you think that, you didn't understand the argument.
>
>I'm the third party here, I find that a mail to someone broke, I try to mail
>their postmaster, but I can't, because I've been blacklisted and their network
>is just dropping. I have no idea (other than what the DNS tells me) whether
>they really are supposed to be the MX for that domain. As far as I'm
>concerned, I'm sending it to the right place. If they turn around and say
>"relaying denied", then I'm likely to try and mail their postmaster and try
>and work out whether that's a configuration error on their end, or a
>configuration error in the DNS. If I can't do that, that's equivalent, in
>my mind, to not being able to send a bounce, or an abuse mail.
>
>My mail system does callouts, so if you blacklist me, you won't be able to
>send me mail either.
>
I agree that if someone breaks their own MX you are in your own right
not to accept mail from their domain, but that's completely
independent from someone dropping you because you attempted to
deliver mail to their server due to an incorrect MX (of course unless
the MX record is under their control).
I would do the same as you do (well, failed callouts on my system not
necessarily mean rejection).
The server receiving de facto "incorrectly" routed mail is also a
third party here, and its administrators are in their own right to
drop connections from whoever attempt to incorrectly relay through
them.
Both behaviours are uncooperative, as they might be the result of
innocent misconfigurations. This is why I said you were contradicting
yourself.
I also said previously that I do not think the second behaviour
(dropping) to be very useful, as it might lead to a mild DOS (towards
the innocent third parties, you and the server in this case..).
Having said so, whoever misconfigures his MXs and do not correct it,
should be, well, you know what he should be.. no mercy.
Giuliano
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