My gut response is in their effort to stop spam, they go to far, even admitting they will block legit mail.
8-bit bytes in headers and bodies are used by spammers to break string matching, with the possibility of non-printability making them hard to detect visually.
8-bit is illegal unless properly escaped. In today's environment, 8-bit is more likely to be an accurate indicator of abusive mail than it is of legit. So I don't think messagewall is going too far.
"Legit" mail using illegit 8-bit codes makes the mail illegit and blockable.
As always, letting "legit" (supposedly non-abusive) mail through (and promoting that as a selling point) even when the has msg+sender has abused/screwed up DNS and SMTP settings, and uses illegit codes like 8-bits in bodies and subjects, makes it harder for all of us to distinguish between the incompetent/erroneous legit senders and the malicious abusers.
ie, not rejecting "legit" users who are screwed up is actually making the mail abuse problem worse, not better. If their mail were rejected, the "legit" users will quickly learn to fix their problems. Giving them a pass is the wrong policy.
Len
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