Re: [exim] Hostnames

John W. Baxter wrote:
> On 11/10/06 1:23 AM, "Renaud Allard" <renaud@???> wrote:
>
>> If everyone in the world was required to have matching HELO, PTR, A
>> record, blocking spam would become more trivial as zombies would be
>> identified very easily and you would just have to have a list of spam
>> sending servers. That's why I think we should slowly evolve to such a
>> behavior. But that's my own opinion.
>
> Considering how long we've been slowly evolving toward RFC 2821 (which isn't
> "done" yet), I wonder how long it will take to go beyond RFC 2821 to an RFC
> with MUSTs around the helo data and reaction to bad helo data. Once there
> IS such an RFC, finalized, than the world can slowly evolve toward that.
>
> 2030?
>
> --John
>
>
>

August of 1982 if you take a strict interpretation.

One doesn't have to wait for 'MUST' when no other option save 'fqdn' (explained)
and IP-literal was discussed or illustrated.

The only thing missing was a 'hard' linkage between HELO and its resolution and
the connected IP and its PTR. But that, too was heavily 'implied'.

See 3.7, 4.1.1 et al.

There are appearances also of clauses such as:

"Note that the name elements of domains
are the official names -- no use of nicknames or aliases is
allowed."

Bottom line, IMNSHO, is that from RFC 821 original onward there has always been
more support for the strict interpretaton than for anything else.

It is the 'be generous with what you accept..' tradition that has been taken or
granted, is now widely abused - and is hard to back out of.

Bill

(Hoping the paid spam-lobby / free adsl advocates are off-duty for the weekend...)