On Thu, May 08, 2025 at 05:22:32PM -0400, John Levine wrote: > It appears that Marc <m...@f1-outsourcing.eu> said: > >> Yeah, at this point, if I get anything from Outlook, Yahoo, Google, > >> Mailchimp, Mailgun, OVH, or Sendgrid and it’s not a explicitly a > >> whitelisted entry, I bounce it. > > > >I used a greylist where emails get a 4xx message with a link that allows the > >email through ... > > Why would a mail system tell senders about a 4xx reply? That means to try > again, not to bounce it.
In a good old times, people had expectations of computer systems that they will perform their function. Not only did people fully expect that e-mail they sent would be delivered, they would expected it would be delivered promptly. If it even got delayed by few hours, that was considered a serious problem, and a reason to call up the postmaster on another side and inform them to fix their system. > I realize that old versions of sendmail sent those annoying "your message has > been delayed, retrying" > reports but I hope we all realize those are a mistake, at least for any mail > system in this millenium. Yeah. Since then, Internet has over-commercialized, spammers emerged, faked from fields become the norm, SpamAssasin came into existence, backscatter spam made useful features annoying, etc. Today, if the e-mail you're sending is important, you'll follow it up with IM or voice call to verify if it has reached the recipient. Nobody today _expects_ that every e-mail will get delivered at all (or that anyone would notified on failure to deliver), much less that it would happen in reasonable time. Which is a shame. DSN's were an elegant solution... for a more civilized age. https://xkcd.com/297/ -- Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.
