[ On Wednesday, June 29, 2005 at 14:55:47 (-0700), Steve Lamb wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [exim] a large number of domains fronted by Exim are refusing bounces...
>
> No, that's *your* point.
Obvoiusly.
> Which has been refuted, numerous times, by the
> very valid point that to do so would make other things which should be easy
> more difficult than they need to be.
Well, such attempts at refutation have failed miserably since they've
all failed to take into account that there are other in fact other
existing and successfull implementations which do make it difficult for
admins to blindly ignore such basic protocol requirements as handling
messages which have null return paths.
I've never heard anyone complaint that such implementations are more
difficult to use than they need to be either.
As y'all know I'm most familiar with Smail, which makes it very hard for
the average admin to unilaterally block messages with an empty sender
address, so for another example let's see if you can read between the
lines of this answer from the Postfix FAQ:
59. I get a lot of spam with a blank envelope sender address. How can
I block these?
You don't want to block messages based on the fact that they have a
null return path. Accepting null envelope addresses is required by
the standards. The technique is used to prevent looping of error
notifications. You'll have to identify the spam by some other means.
Or maybe this from the Sendmail on-line docs:
How do I reject "MAIL FROM:<>"?
Don't do it! Internet standards require to accept e-mail with an
empty sender address, i.e.,
Error messages (in general: delivery status notifications) are sent
this way, so they must not be rejected.
Guess what? Some people can't read and they have a setting in their
mail server (IMail 4.0+ for NT) that rejects those addresses. Why
are people allowed to distribute (sell?) such software? (they
probably take some other company as bad example...).
I dare say the same could be said of Exim.
That all said I have also heard lazy people say in general (i.e. not
here) that they'd prefer to just block all bounces because they don't
like bad news. That's fine for them, but not fine for a general purpose
MTA.
> BTW, just to prove my point about RFCing out stupidity. I've told you
> before[1] and I'm telling you again. Do not CC me on list mail. I get the
> list just fine.
BTW, as I've told you numerous times before if you want people to reply
to the list without CCing you then you need to follow the RFC-suggested
protocol for doing so and set your reply-to address to be the list
address. It works for everyone else, including both Philip and myself.
--
Greg A. Woods
H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???> Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
