Re: [Asrg] MXs Used As Authentication - Why RMX?

[Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>]

At 7:28 AM -0400 2003/08/25, Bill Cole wrote:

>  It is not what happens in the real world. For sites handling
>  significant mail volume, outbound mail and inbound mail are large
>  enough and different enough in their ideal system design that it
>  makes sense to have them handled by different systems.
	This issue is dealt with in 
<http://www.irtf.org/asrg/draft-vixie-repudiating-mail-from.txt>.

	As I see it, one primary problem with this draft is that it 
breaks the most common form of mailing lists -- aliases.


	This draft also prevents people from being able to legitimately 
transmit e-mail using domain names that they don't control, via other 
servers.  It is not at all unusual for me to go travelling somewhere 
and want to continue to use my normal e-mail address, but use the 
local mail relay services available from the provider I'm using at 
the moment.

	Same for third-party webmail services.

	You would have no choice but to have SMTPAUTH or TLSSMTP 
available for the official relays for your domain, and to be able to 
guarantee that you can always get through to them using these 
features, as opposed to being transparently proxied somewhere else 
(something that more and more providers are starting to do).


	In my case, the Skynet mail servers are on many black lists, 
because there are a large number of customers (over one million), a 
small percentage of whom generate spam (or are open relays for spam). 
But that small percentage is enough to get the main mail servers 
effectively permanently black listed, even if this is a serial 
process -- get off the black list that resulted from customer A, get 
right back on the black list because of customer B.

	There are some places out there that use the rfc-ignorant.org 
domain-based black lists, and I can't get mail to those people using 
this account, no matter what relay I use (yes, Skynet is stupid 
enough to not have a functioning abuse@ address).

	But for everyone else, I can route my outbound mail through an 
ssh tunnel to a server I have elsewhere in the US, and at least I'm 
not hindered by the fact that the Skynet servers are on many of the 
blacklists in the world.


	I don't see this sort of solution being feasible.  The legitimate 
third-party relay problem is a tough one to solve.

--
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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