David Lee wrote:
>System: SA 3.1.0 (called from MailScanner, called from sendmail.
>
>The ISP "mmail.co.uk" (part of the O2 mobile phone ("cellphone" under
>trans-Atlantic translation!) company here in the UK) generates a peculiar
>"Date:" format. So when it arrives here, our SA is tagging it as spam.
>Part of the headers:
>
>
>
>>Date: Wed, 22 Mar 06 12:00:00 GMT Standard Time
>>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Subject: {Spam?} MMail Message
>>X-Mailer: <WIN Mail>
>>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Mar 2006 12:00:00.0046 (UTC)
>> FILETIME=[253124E0:01C64DA8]
>>X-DurhamAcUk-MailScanner: Found to be clean
>>X-DurhamAcUk-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spam, SpamAssassin (score=6.804,
>> required 6, BAYES_40 -0.18, FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS 2.53,
>> FROM_LOCAL_HEX 1.30, INVALID_DATE 2.19, NO_REAL_NAME 0.96)
>>X-DurhamAcUk-MailScanner-SpamScore: ssssss
>>
>>
>
>For data privacy reasons, I have "x"d out some of the purely-digit
>"From:" LHS.
>
>Aside: the "FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS" and "FROM_LOCAL_HEX" are probably
>immutable, as the "mmail.co.uk" service definition uses a mobile number
>as that "From:" LHS.
>
>The main addressable issue here seems to be the "INVALID_DATE". The
>"Date:" supplied by Mmail does not have a simple timezone (e.g. expect
>"GMT"), but rather "GMT Standard Time". (Correct?)
>
>This seems to me to be a clear breach of RFC2822. Mmail's defence is that
>section 4.3 ends:
>
>
>
>> Other multi-character (usually between 3 and 5) alphabetic time zones
>> have been used in Internet messages. Any such time zone whose
>> meaning is not known SHOULD be considered equivalent to "-0000"
>> unless there is out-of-band information confirming their meaning.
>>
>>
>
>and that the "usually 3 or 5 alphabetic" could (they argue) include the
>17-character "GMT Standard Time".
>
>Can someone demonstrate from RFC2822 that "GMT Standard Time" definitely
>is, or definitely isn't, technically legal?
>
>(If it does happen to be legal, and if this nevertheless triggers SA's
>INVALID_DATE, then we have an SA bug.)
>
>Would "GMT (Standard Time)" be legal? (I raise that just in case "mmail"
>really need to keep that information in that place for some reason; this
>would give them a way out.)
>
>
In all engineering, including Software, the KISS principle applies.
Even if "GMT Standard Time" were legal (and it's doubtful), what do you
get by using that string instead of "GMT" tout court?
In the old days of the Internet, when they first started having "bake
offs" as they
were called back then, if a standard was ambiguous, then you'd look at
whichever
vendors managed to interoperate... ask them how they had done things... and
bless their way of interpreting the standard as the "right way".
(That's how we
ended up settling some thorny questions about IP security option processing,
for instance...)
What you have here is a failure to interoperate. ;-)
-Philip
