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Re: Spam filtering bcps [was Re: Open Letter to D-Link abouttheir NTP vandalism]

  • From: Matthew Black
  • Date: Wed Apr 12 16:36:41 2006 
On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:18:24 -0400
 [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:16:53 PDT, Steve Thomas said:

> I haven't seen any succinct justification for providing a
> 550 message rejection for positively-identified spam versus
> silently dropping the message. Lots of how-to instructions
> but no whys.

RFC 2821?

  ...the protocol requires that a server accept responsibility
  for either delivering a message or properly reporting the
  failure to do so.
Your statement is open to multiple interpretations. I argue that
anytime our system identifies a message as spam that it gets
delivered to the system bit bucket.

RFC-821 and netiquette also "mandate" e-mail be properly addressed.
System manufacturers and administrators make compromises because
strict adherence to the rules is not always possible from an
operational perspective.


Elsewhere in 2821 (6.1, to be specific):

  When the receiver-SMTP accepts a piece of mail (by sending a "250 OK"
  message in response to DATA), it is accepting responsibility for
  delivering or relaying the message.  It must take this responsibility
  seriously.  It MUST NOT lose the message for frivolous reasons, such
  as because the host later crashes or because of a predictable
  resource shortage.

Lost me on that part about crashes being frivolous reasons.
This is a political statement not an indisputable matter of fact.
OK? Got that? You '250 OK' it, you got a *serious* responsibility. Losing the
message because the whole damned machine crashes is considered a frivolous reason.

And throwing it away because you don't like the way it looks is OK? Man,
...............................***

you're in for some severe karmic protocol payback down the road... ;)

I'm not the one throwing them away and never look at them; watch
the finger wagging. And thanks for the karma heads up, Bhudda.

matthew black
california state university, long beach