[Mimedefang] roaringpenguin.com is listed in rfc-ignorant

David F. Skoll dfs at roaringpenguin.com
Wed Sep 29 08:17:35 EDT 2004


On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Richard Laager wrote:

> From my e-mails to the admin of rfc-ignorant.org, I believe the stance
> is that "postmaster" (case-insensitive with or without the domain) must
> accept mail from anyone. The basis cited for this is RFC 2821,
> specifically section 4.5.1:

Dredd is totally hypocritical.  See
http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/policy-postmaster.php

"After careful consideration, there seemed to be a consensus among
 users that use of blacklists, etc., did not meet the "narrowly
 tailored" requirements for blocking mail to postmaster, but that it
 would be undesirable to list sites simply for employing the MAPS RBL
 and such on their postmaster address. It was decided that we wouldn't
 list folks if the rejection message for postmaster seemed to indicate
 the reason for denial ("{ip} rejected as listed on the MAPS RBL",
 etc.)"

So if I rejected mail to postmaster because the machine was listed on
"vigilante.anti-spam-nazis.net", I would have been OK, even though that
would be much more destructive than my carefully-tailored decision not
to accept DSNs for Postmaster.

Also see: http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/policy.php

"Also, before a site is submitted, the submitter must have made a due
 diligence effort to notify the system maintainer of the problem."

This didn't happen.

Dredd is yet another overly-zealous RBL maintainer, and I stick to my
policy of not dealing with his ilk.  Any site that rejects mail on
RBLs has chosen to allow third-parties to block people who might want
to communicate with it, and it's really not my problem.  If important
mail from our domain gets blocked, I'll simply phone the recipient,
explain the situation, and say that unless they stop using
rfc-ignorant, or whitelist our domain, they won't be able to get email
from roaringpenguin.com.

I will be writing an article about this and posting it on our Web site.
It's a great illustration of the dangers of placing your trust in RBLs.

--
David.



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