On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 1:58 AM, Roland Turner via dmarc-discuss <dmarc-discuss@dmarc.org> wrote: > Jim Popovitch wrote: > > >> The difficulty I have is exactly as you described. I received a >> DMARC report that says there is a DKIM failure, but what is not clear >> is whether or not the email was "quite possibly not tested or >> recorded". That DMARC report is pointless without knowing more. > > You should definitely disregard reports that aren't useful to you.
I'd actually prefer to work with the sender in order to fully understand the differences between what they see and what larger receivers see. > This and some earlier remarks[1] suggest that you're treating DMARC as a > product or service that you're being invited to purchase and whose vendor is > therefore motivated to present a product or service that is to your liking - Absolutely not. There is nothing I've said to remotely indicate that, even that footnoted comment doesn't suggest I feel others have an obligation to meet my demands. They do, however, have an obligation to send accurate data, and if they don't that is disingenuous. > and perhaps to improve it to that end - in order to encourage you to > purchase. That's not what's going on. Partial visibility into receivers' > systems is being provided, gratis, on an as-is basis (warts and all), in > order to allow interested domain registrants/owners to take action to > tighten their own practices and to detect and act against fraudulent uses of > their domains. Experience to date suggests that what is being provided is > appropriate and useful to that end. There remains scope for improvement of > course, and the fact that some receivers' systems don't work in a way that > even gathers the information that you'd like to receive - let alone report > it - is an unfortunate fact of real world email systems. > > If you're unwilling or unable to process raw feedback, then you should > perhaps seek out a service provider whose expertise includes dealing with > the rough edges. There are several; naturally, most cost [quite a bit of] > money. Let me reiterate something I've said a few times now. I only need 1 accurate report, that attests to alignment, to know that my work is complete. The rest are chaff, and I've got no interest in reading reports on chaff. >> In it's infancy DMARC was designed for transactional email, not human >> generated content. > > This is not correct. Right from the first high-volume domain with a p=reject > policy (paypal.com) there was a mix of transactional and human-generated > email with the same domain-name. I'm not going to dig up the history (esp at this hour of the AM before the coffee is done brewing) but it's there in one of the early specs. I've highlighted it before on this list. >> In those days pundits decreed that DMARC wasn't >> for MLMs and that mailinglists would be whitelisted and treated with >> special care. As it turns out, the truth is somewhat different. > > This is hardly surprising. Pundits should be considered entertainers, not > oracles. Some of those pundits are still reading this. >> Of course, my interest has now turned to >> trying to understand why XYZ determines there is a failure (was it a >> DNS problem?, was there a middle man?, etc.). The end goal being >> perfect delivery, sans any problems or implication of there being a >> problem needing investigation or effort on my part. > > This is fair enough, but as above, you'll do better if you understand the > limitations of the tools that you're working with. Choices include: > > continue assessing DMARC feedback yourself, and accept that it contains > warts and will never be perfect; > find a vendor who will provide digested feedback which makes all of the > unpleasantness go away before you see it (this is costly, and the likelihood > of an exact match between your desires and the services on offer is low, > however...); or > disregard DMARC feedback entirely. I think I've already made my intention well known, and I would never pay someone to report on suspect data. > Agitating to have low level feedback mechanisms not have low-level warts is > unlikely to succeed, particularly when that feedback is provided gratis. Thank goodness other solid ideas didn't struggle with those fiefdom issues. Imagine if FBLs and ARF had been subjected to this pay-to-play model you're advocating. -Jim P. _______________________________________________ dmarc-discuss mailing list dmarc-discuss@dmarc.org http://www.dmarc.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc-discuss NOTE: Participating in this list means you agree to the DMARC Note Well terms (http://www.dmarc.org/note_well.html)
