> [Spammers are] the unreasonable ones.
If that's what you meant, you wouldn't say "I think any reasonable
person would understand that sometimes you may have to 'break the
rules' in order to survive on the net." You meant something else in
this passage, so stand behind it.
> I'm basically talking about email address verification here, and
> making the point that refusal of email by RBL, Content, or address
> verification is allowed, but refusal of an email by merit of it not
> having a return address *AT ALL* isn't.
The null reverse-path is not actually equivalent to "not having a
return address." Perhaps you are confused by the use of the keyword
"null," which usually does mean "none/unknown" as opposed to
"empty/known" or "non-empty/known" in IT. In this case, it more
properly might be called "a known empty reverse-path." This is a fully
valid, RFC-specified reverse-path. You keep harping on it as if
something essential to an SMTP transaction is missing. It's not. It's
part of the way SMTP works--the real SMTP, not your restricted
version.
> Maybe I should have made myself a little clearer when I wrote ["you
> at least get an identifier of postmaster or mailer-daemon @ tld"]. I
> was talking about email address being null being a qualifier for
> being outright rejected...
You clearly, if not necessarily deliberately, mixed up the SMTP
envelope and SMTP data and used that mixup to support your idyllic
vision of how blocking null senders at the envelope does not
necessarily block bounce notifications.
> ...but you decided to carefully dissect what I was saying...
A split-second dissection, really, since what you were proposing was
glaringly at odds with the anatomy of real-world SMTP.
> ...and turn it into your own personal "I'm more knowledgeable than
> you" session.
Yep, I've grown a little sick of people who don't do their required
reading in newsgroups on the null sender issue and then come forth
with a FUSSP which makes SMTP even less workable than it already is.
You're kicking the protocol when it's already down--and you do not
have the experience to be telling anyone to follow your directions to
stop spam.
> It matters *not* to me personally if a mail is person to person,
> commercial, or whatever, if it has no return address, I should be
> able to ignore/delete it at the server level for any reason. Period.
Great, start your own Internet. Everybody's got a fantasy successor to
SMTP, by the way.
> The whole idea is that email should have a viable return address or
> be eligible for immediate refusal.
<sigh>
The null sender is a viable return address, as explicitly
specified, and later further expanded, in multiple RFCs. Start
reading.
--Sandy
------------------------------------
Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist
Broadleaf Systems, a division of
Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc.
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SpamAssassin plugs into Declude!
http://www.mailmage.com/download/software/freeutils/SPAMC32/Release/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
