Jason Bertoch wrote:
On 2/25/2010 8:08 PM, Marc Perkel wrote:
The forward issue is definitely an annoyance. But SPF has a problem
in that as the supporters admit, it doesn't block spam, and it can't
be used as a white rule because spammers often use SPF correctly. I'm
not sure what you mean that forwarding has been depricated. Lots of
people forward email for a lot of different reasons. I don't
understand what you mean.
SPF wasn't meant to block spam, please stop asserting that. It may
prove useful as part of an overall spam fighting solution, but that's
not the point of the original design. Just as FCrDNS has proven to be
a useful tool in spam fighting, it was never intended to be used that
way either. Off-site forwarding has been deprecated, mostly due to
spam fighting methods, but for many other good reasons too.
Every modern mail solution allows an account holder to pop/imap to
another account to pull in mail from somewhere else. Forwarding only
assists the lazy and breaks spam filtering. If there wasn't another
option, sure, off-site forwarding would still be
needed/wanted/required. That's just not the case anymore, and
fighting it causes greater loss of service than adopting it. Spam
filtering is simply more important than handling the exception cases
where someone refuses to pull in mail from somewhere else.
I understand this doesn't match the design of your service, but that
doesn't make SPF wrong for the reasons you state. Off-site forwarding
is old technology and old thinking. Solutions exist to fix your
problem, as I stated previously. SPF may break forwarding, but
forwarding breaks spam filtering...and what's more important when
there's already a plethora of solutions to deal with forwarding?
/out
So why would I want to break email forwarding for SPF?
Then there's the reality disconnect. You said:
"SPF *wasn't meant to block spam*, please stop asserting that. It may
prove useful as part of an overall *spam fighting solution*, but that's
not the point of the original design."
Seems like a contradiction.
And - SPF was originally introduced as a spam fighting solution. But
they backed off when it was clear that it didn't fight spam.
