- From: Jeffrey Altman <jaltman@secure-endpoints.com>
- Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:20:35 -0400
- To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
- CC: practicalsecurity@hbarel.com, public-usable-authentication@w3.org
- Message-ID: <44957D53.7050209@secure-endpoints.com>
My e-mail server software supports both SPF and DK. I attempted to utilize both but discovered that SPF and DK miserably failed with mail relayed by mailing lists. Given that I am subscribed to hundreds of lists and I desire to receive mail that is sent via the list servers and that I wish mail I send to be received by readers of the lists, I turned both SPF and DK off. The solutions are flawed because they do not permit the continued use of common e-mail usage patterns. I suspect more organizations would deploy a solution that worked. Jeffrey Altman James A. Donald wrote: > > -- > Why SPF and DK are not being used: > > Obviously, domains have no incentive to use SPF and/or > DK unless email recipients filter on SPF and DK > > But users do not. > > Largely because they cannot. There are no filter tools > that make good use of SPF and DK information. There are > filter tools, but they are research demonstrations, > rather than actually useful in reducing the spam in my > inbox. > > What the filter should do, is as part of Bayesian > filtering, observe that some messages get marked as > spam, and others as ham, and conclude that if some mail > that provably arrives from certain domains is ham, all > mail that provably arrives from those domains is > probably ham, generating a list of known good domains > which it then uses to guess which emails are ham. It > should also observe what domains usually provide > evidence that email came from the domain it appeared to > come from, and conclude that email without such > evidence, purportedly coming from a domain that usually > provides such evidence, is probably forged, therefore > probably spam. SPF and DK information needs to be > integrated with all other available information for > filtering mail. > > The widespread deployment of such filters would give > mail server administrators reason to support SPF and DK. > They would DK their outgoing mail in order to get their > domain on the known good list. At present they have no > such incentive, and so are not supporting SPF or DK. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > CAbCqOSgym8Up02XNnb1alzFW4VBYsBpa/7xjkfS > 4pjb+C/KVowMqXdI49IgPIpZ4kB3ulWsslp3qz+jm >
Received on Sunday, 18 June 2006 16:20:05 UTC