--On 13 October 2009 23:07:58 +0000 John Levine <[email protected]> wrote:

> This is really much simpler than you're making it out to be.
>
>> I understand the issue here, but part of the point of DKIM/ADSP is to
>> allow  automated systems to assign reputation to an email domain or
>> email address  - a byte string.
>
> For DKIM, that's basically right, it ties a domain to a mail stream so
> receivers can assign a reputation to the mail stream.  For ADSP that's
> completely wrong, all it does is allow senders to make assertions that
> receivers may or may not find credible or useful, but that have
> nothing at all to do with managing the mail stream's reputation.
> (Remember that ADSP only applies to mail not in the signed mail
> stream.)

OK. What ADSP adds is the ability to assign reputation to a specific email 
claiming to originate from a specific domain. Except for "unknown".

>> It might be nice if paypal could publish in the DNS a set of related
>> domains, that it is willing to share the reputation of paypay.com
>
> Why would they do that?

For brand reputation protection - you've cut the relevant quote that I was 
responding to. It's not really a DKIM issue, but if I get email from 
paypal.co.uk, then how do I determine whether that email is from paypal? 
Nothing in the paypal.com ADSP records tells me anything about that domain. 
I don't know whether to expect email from it. The absence of DKIM and ADSP 
records tells me nothing.

My idea is that a company might publish an exhaustive list of domains that 
they use, so that I can automatically detect domains that may be attempts 
to defraud recipients. I'd probably only apply this to high value domains, 
but the algorithm would look like this: "if the domain is similar to, but 
different from PAYPAL.COM, then bump up the spamassassin score". After all, 
that's what we hope that users will be doing when reading messages.


> Remember that DKIM is not SPF nor Sender-ID,
> and you can put your domain's signature on any mail you send.  Paypal
> signs their mail with paypal.com.  If I send you a Paypal payment,
> they will send you a mail with my return address announcing the
> payment.  That message is signed with d=paypal.com because Paypal
> takes responsibility.  (They really do this, I just tried it.)

They use a third party return-path? Presumably not, with the implications 
for domains that publish spf -all records. Or you mean some message header? 
The From: header? That would have ADSP implications.



>> Positive reputation could flow from paypal.com to the shared domains,
>> and  negative reputation in the reverse direction.
>
> Positive reputation flows from paypal.com to the mail they sign.  If you
> think they need a lot of signing domains, you're misunderstanding the
> way that DKIM works.

Actually, that isn't something that occurred to me, but it's useful to 
know.

> R's,
> John



-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/
_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to 
http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html

Reply via email to