[Mimedefang] SPF

[David F. Skoll]

Rich West wrote:

> I know this is now off-topic from the list, and I don't mean to rock the
> boat any, but that is a pretty weak excuse.  There has to be more to it
> than some idiot's broken email server that drove you that decision.

Yes.  So it turns out the salesperson in question deleted the bounce
message, so I have no idea what really happened.  I've since reinstated
the SPF record.  Although it hasn't helped reduce bounces from joe-jobs,
I guess it can't hurt.

> SPF's only goal was to provide a means toward ensuring that the email is
> originating from an authorized location.  That gives the email
> administrator full knowledge of where email is being sent through. 
> Also, SPF is one of those "set it and forget it" things.  It should
> never require constant tweaking or maintenance.  Periodic, maybe..

SPF breaks forwarding, which is very annoying.

> For folks on the road, there are plenty of workable solutions.

We use OpenVPN, which works well if both ends are running Linux.
Because of deficiencies in Windoze's "TUN" implementation, it's a bit
more painful to get it working on that platform, but we managed it.

> Besides, what looks more professional: Email from
> user at roaringpenguin.com, or email from user at comcast.com with a reply-to
> set to user at roaringpenguin.com?

We never do that.

Actually, it occurs to me that MUAs should allow you to specify the
envelope and header From addresses separately.  For the sake of SPF,
they could use user at myisp.com, but the From: address (which is all
that 99.9% of recipients know about) could still happily be
user at roaringpenguin.com.  Ratware already does this; it's time
legitimate MUAs caught up with the state of the art. :-)

--
David.