On 2011-07-06 at 05:57 -0700, Lynda wrote:
> Well, you would certainly have found me in the opposing and more 
> intelligent (in my opinion) view supporting the record, and agreeing 
> with the idea that TXT is meant for, well, text things.

Oh, I agree.  But horses departed at speed through barn doors and all
that.

> records (but 100% of those sites have an equivalent TXT record that is 
> identical in every way).

Good, the specs mandate that.

FWIW, I've resisted SPF at all, but where I do have SPF records, they're
stored in both SPF and TXT RR types.  Mostly the text field within those
records just reads "v=spf1 -all" -- I tag all domains which don't send
email with that.  After all, the failure modes for SPF are that mail is
incorrectly rejected; if the idea is that the mail should be rejected
anyway, there's no harm done.

> One supposes that you *did* read all the messages in this thread, 

Yes.  I was summarising the state of affairs as a generic piece of
guidance to those looking at SPF.  I tend towards the complete.

> I flat *loathe* DKIM. It makes email messages huge, and I find that most 
> spam (that I see) has either SPF or DKIM records in any case. Until we 
> get serious about prosecuting spammers, with actual penalties (and 
> include the companies that they spam *for* in those penalties), it isn't 
> going to get better. SPF is a band aid, and I'm annoyed about having to 
> add it, but understand that, due to the way the mailing list I have is 
> set up, for *this* particular instance, it's vaguely helpful.

DKIM doesn't prevent spam as a whole. It does reduce phishing, joe-jobs
and other abuse where a legitimate mail domain is fraudulently used.
It doesn't prevent homoglyph-style attacks.

Rather than use ADSP records for policy rules on rejecting mail, the
large mail providers, banks and a few others are part of an industry
body (I forget the name) which coordinates lists of domains which only
ever send DKIM-signed mail.  If mail comes in claiming to be from
big-bank-in-usa and it's not validly signed, it gets dropped outright,
no matter how good a job was done in crafting the email.

DKIM helps the legitimate senders far more than it hurts the bad actors.
It's not anti-spam, it is pro-domain-reputation.

Reputation can be negative.

> [1] I'm retired. I really *like* being retired.

I envy you.  :)

-Phil
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