On 9/28/20 10:35 AM, Kurt Andersen (b) wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 11:23 AM Scott Kitterman <skl...@kitterman.com 
> <mailto:skl...@kitterman.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On Sunday, September 27, 2020 1:16:11 PM EDT John Levine wrote:
> 
>     Agreed.  Maybe it would help if someone who takes the latter view would
>     explain what they think RFC 7489, Section 6.6.2, Step 6 is for:
> 
>     >    6.  Apply policy.  Emails that fail the DMARC mechanism check are
>     >        disposed of in accordance with the discovered DMARC policy of the
>     >        Domain Owner.  See Section 6.3 for details.
> 
>     I don't think that says "then toss the results into your classifier".
> 
> 
> You completely ignored section 6.7 (Policy Enforcement Considerations) which 
> states:
> 
>> Final disposition of a message is always a matter of local policy.
> 
> Local policy could be considered "the output of some classifier" or other 
> mechanics left to the invention of the receiver.
> 
> This is a part of the documented DMARC spec, not a change.

Reading this thread, it comes to my mind that the "fundamental disconnect" that 
John raises is partly caused by an externalized factor: the shift to cloud 
mailbox hosting.  The roles, responsibilities, and assumptions have changed.

The receiver, who is now a customer of an ISP, does not have the ability to 
"invent mechanics" because the tools aren't provided by the ISP.  The ISP, of 
course, has a good reason to K.I.S.S. for support.  

It means that the ISP takes over responsibility for local policy mechanics to a 
greater extent.  Falling short of providing their customers a platform to 
invent mechanics the ISP will just implement the none|reject|quarantine 
mechanics and say they "support DMARC".

Even if the ISP has proprietary local policy mechanics that they apply to all 
of their customers' inbound mail, they aren't likely to document it in great 
detail or offer many exemptions.  It's a black box.

e.g. I find it hard to imagine that an ISP would have the willingness to exempt 
a boutique MLM for all of their customers, so ARC, in and of itself, doesn't 
really help MLMs move away from From munging.  Does it make sense to suggest 
that in order for ARC to succeed, then ISPs need to offer a way for their 
customers to define their trusted intermediaries?  What if the ISP chooses not 
to offer that?  Do they "support ARC" in a meaningful way?

For the "filtering signal" viewpoint to succeed, I would ask: is there a need 
to define some local policy mechanics into the spec so that the ISP can be held 
to account by customers to "fully support DMARC".  If the ISP offers no 
adequate mechanics to do signal filtering, then that ISP's hosted receivers 
cannot realistically support DMARC based on the assumption baked into DMARC 
that receivers can and will implement override mechanics.

The roles have changed, which has diluted the "filtering signal's" value mostly 
to the ISPs, and the benefit to receivers is metered by the extent to which the 
ISPs are willing to build a platform for their customers to invent mechanics.  

If the shift to cloud is incompatible with "filtering signal" mechanics for 
local policy overrides, is DMARC's only value left to receivers "what users 
see" and the simplistic none|quarantine|fail mechanics, as defined?

Jesse

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