On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 09:45:40PM +1000, Robert Mueller wrote:
> IMHO everything about SPF and SRS borders on somewhere between pointless
> and craziness. Is there any evidence it's been useful in any way to help
> stop or identify spam?
No. SPF was announced by an ignorant newbie with this grandiose claim:
"Spam as a technical problem is solved by SPF."
That was enough for me to conclude, on inspection, that it was utterly
worthless. [1] Nobody with any significant anti-spam expertise thinks
that any one measure would suffice. For those holding out some hope,
their first clue should have been that the earliest and most prolific
adopters of SPF were spammers.
Spam (and all other forms of abuse) is/are best stopped as close to the
source as possible: every hop away from there makes the problem harder
and pushes the error rate up. Thus the ideal place is *at* the source.
This doesn't require SPF or SRS or DKIM or any of these other bits of
technology. It requires competent, diligent, hard-working professionals
who actually give a damn about making sure that their operation isn't
an operational menace to the entire rest of the Internet.
And those are in precious short supply these days -- even at places that
could afford to hire them by the dozens. (I'm looking at you, Google,
Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL.)
---rsk
[1] This should go down in history along with "I have here in my briefcase..."
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