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
