Points (Charles' too) taken. Both good arguments. Dunno know if they
changed my mind, but got my thinking anyway...
jon
At 3:06 PM -0500 3/31/00, Dave Sill wrote:
>Jon Rust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>I agree with most of what you said here Dave, but I'd have to say
>>that rejecting mail with envelope sender domains that don't exist is
>>a good thing (either an A or CNAME record, or an MX). If for no other
>>reason, you can't bounce back to them.
>
>You have two choices: accept the mail or reject it. If you accept it,
>it may be unreplyable, but at least the message has been delivered. If
>you reject it, the mail doesn't go through, which is kind of counter
>to the whole idea of SMTP.
>
>Now, the envelope sender could be bad for one of two reasons: it could
>be intentionally bad, i.e., spam, or it could be unintentionally bad,
>e.g., a typo or a DNS fubar. If it's spam, and you reject it, you
>win. If it's not spam and you reject it, you lose.
>
>OK, so you're willing to throw out the baby with bathwater, and you
>start rejecting them. Lots of other people start doing that, too.
>
>Do the spammers:
>
> 1) throw up their hands and admit defeat, or
> 2) start using valid (but wrong) domains in their envelope return
> paths, thereby defeating your rejection and escalating the arms
> race?
>
>Note that many are already doing (2), of course.
>
>-Dave
