AOL Will Not Support Sender-ID 269
DominoTree writes "America Online said Thursday that it will not support the Microsoft-backed antispam technology called Sender-ID. The online giant cited 'lackluster' industry support and compatibility issues with the anti-spam technology SPF that AOL supports."
AOL does something we like? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hardly, its business related (Score:5, Informative)
SPF isn't an AOL technology - it's an open project. The core of the protocol seems to be adding some extended information in your DNS records.
SPF website [pobox.com]
Regards,
Denny
ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:4, Funny)
CB--->
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about the all mighty buck. If they think this concept will make them more money than it cost to research and implement, you can bet your arse they'll implement it. They really don't care about interoperability either. They could care less if no one outside of the msn.com and hotmail.com domains can use it (or care to). That's one helluva userbase right there. Plus, they can just spout it off as another "Security" or "anti-spam" feature to get people to pay for hotmail premium accounts.
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:5, Insightful)
They thought they could ignore the Internet and TCP/IP, but eventually they realized that some things are even bigger than they are.
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:5, Interesting)
One I've noticed recently - I've hardly seen an obvious FrontPage site in months. Either people who started building websites which look less "frontpage like" or it's not being used as much.
Is there anyway to calculate the level of Frontpage usage?
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily related, but the last version of FP is a lot better than the previous ones - I guess the MS Frontpage team got tired of being the laughing stock of the web dev community...
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft is a big player but most of it products are under rather fair competition with the other big players out there. IBM, Oracle, Unix, Linux, etc... Why do you think Microsoft takes Linux so seriously is because it is in direct competition with Windows market, and is rapidly importing on its main bread and butter. When Linux overtakes windows as a desktop OS, then Open Office will soon take place as the next office suit (Unless MS makes Office for linux in that time frame). And Microsoft will loose its major cash products and will need to resort to (Gasp!) Fair competition with other companies. The Microsoft name will no longer mean Dominance and just will be an other Novel.
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they've shown they care about interoperability very much: they don't like it, and will do whatever they can to disrupt it. That's shown by, for example, the changes they've made to filesharing to make life difficult for the Samba people; the fact that they not only don't document file formats for key applications, but change them slightly with every new application version; and now Sender-ID, where (apparently by order from BG personally) they insisted on licensing terms calculated to be incompatible with some of the most important free software licenses, including the GPL.
I think you're wrong about the Microsoft decision process - "If...this concept will make them more money...". Sender-ID would not make them any money; I very much doubt that anyone is going to migrate from Linux to Windows just to get the supposed benefits of Sender-ID! That's not what its for. Breaking interoperability is a corporate goal for Microsoft, because interoperability allows competitors to survive.
Re:ah, props to AOL for once! (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, what does AOL for Mac OS use?
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they use IE, they get an icon on every OEM windows install. that's a LOT of new customers.
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:5, Interesting)
MSN is tied into the OS in a bunch of other places too ("You're running Outlook for the first time! Would you like to set up a free MSN account?").
Making deals with Microsoft is hard.
Pull Your Head Out Of Your ASS (Score:2, Troll)
Is it REALLY a lot of new customers these days? What with all those free coasters and all, I really don't think the desktop icon means that much. There must be something else.
Like browser mods and and the fact that as we all know, (at least if you know ANYTHING about Windows API and Windows app development), all things in Windows including the browser and the file navigator, they are all "windows". Even Outlook
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:5, Informative)
IE on OSX is pretty much dead.
Never been a mac fan.. but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The more people that use Macs, the more people that will be browsing web sites without IE, and the more websites that won't rely on IE-only functionality.
Truthfully though, it hasn't been a problem running Mozilla for 98% of the sites I visit. And I don't only visit sites like Slashdot - I go to a lot of sites that the masses visit as well. No browser string faking, no activeX plug-ins. Just straight Mozilla, and it works great.
All we need to do is chisel down those last 2% and we'll be living large.
With all the visible security problems in Windows and IE these days - more and more people are getting sick and tired of it. Some people are seeking alternative Browsers, more every day. It's not the obscure security bugs that people care about or even know about it's the ones that allow spyware to be installed causing them to have to call friends, family, support people and generally have a terrible time using their computers.
So.. GO MACS! And.. GO IE BUGS!
Re:Never been a mac fan.. but.. (Score:2)
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:2)
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the $750 million payoff [userfriendly.org] had something to do with it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm, not too fond of Redmond? (Score:2, Funny)
This becomes a digital divide issue... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:link in sig (Score:2)
the first whiny co-worker tomorrow gets that link set as their homepage
Sender ID Framework info (Score:5, Informative)
What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
It comes down to knowing the system which you are using. If someone uses a C/R anti-spam system and cannot even be bother to use it correctly, then that person gets nothing in return. I am not spending my time chasing these people down. If and when said person calls, I just explain that I was not able to respond, and he or she needs to contact the ISP to determine the problem.
You cannot always blame these people, either. There are a number of cases where people refuse to become informed -- they just think it should work with no expendature of effort. But in many cases it is the fault of the ISP which provides whiz-bang services and not a drop of intelligent support, information, guidance, or some combination thereof.
I have read many times over that C/R systems are broken, brain-dead, and a Band-Aid approach to the problem. The more I encounter these systems and the people using them, the more I agree.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably since I employ it (ASK, http://www.paganini.net/ask/ [paganini.net]) behind some bayesian filters (ASSP, http://assp.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]). Considering that my domain receives thousands of UCE/UBE each day, I have no choice but to take militant actions.
ASSP automatically whitelists everyone I mail to, and sets the TTL to 90 days. So any reply is going to be automatically accepted by ASSP.
ASK on the other hand is set that if my "key" (in this case, my PGP Key I
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can do whatever you want with your mail, but I agree with the grandparent--you won't ever see a reply from me. (Or a lot of other people who deal with a lot of email and don't appreciate having their time waste
as a sys admin (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunatly there are thousands of ISPs that dont take SPAM as seriously as what AOL does. Realistically this is something that doesnt come as a suprise to many people that have been following the anti-spam developments closly. You cant blame AOL for having a service that is computer illiterate friendly despite your own experiences.
Everyone has the freedom to choose thier provider. Personally Im never going to use them.. but hey the option is there if you ever do want it. and if you do sign up you can live with less spam
Re:as a sys admin (Score:4, Interesting)
It took me about a month to get myself straight after I'd been blacklisted. They also "removed" the blacklist, and said it was IP-based, but intermittent errors would pop up for weeks afterwards. joeluser@myhost could send to AOL, but janeluser@myhost could not.
BTW, google for "Jason Smathers" if you want to see how effective they've been.
Re:as a sys admin (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not always AOL as a company or as sys admins as its also the users hitting the "this is spam" button... even when its clearly not.
Re:as a sys admin (Score:4, Informative)
Admitedly, I am normally not a big fan of such systems... why should I have to take the time to inform an ISP of my existence, intent to send email, etc., right? Well, in this case it makes sense since they are 1) giving me the benefit of the doubt at first, and 2) giving me a way to make sure that doubt never enters into our relationship. Quite useful, I think.
As an admin myself, I believe this is a useful tool to help find problems in your userbase before they become bigger problems.
Re:as a sys admin (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway after contacting AOL I was able to talk to a postmaster (a real human) on the phone, and he was very pleasant and we worked to resolve the problem within the day. And they also established the feedback loop for us, which actually is a pretty nice service. If for whatever reason spammers ge
Like UUNET? (Score:2)
Re:as a sys admin (Score:2, Insightful)
Some time ago they blocked our IP, ostensibly for sending spam. I contacted them, and eventually managed to persuade them to unblock it, as we weren't evil spammers, but a student campaigning organization.
So they insisted on having an address to send service complaints to, which is cool, we don't want to piss people off with spam. I gave them postmaster@
Then I start getting through the occasional service complaint (scomp@aol.com). Unfortunately these babies:
a. Don't tell you what t
Looks like it was a domino effect... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The online giant cited "lackluster" industry support and compatibility issues with the antispam technology SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, that AOL supports.
AOL's moves come days after the Internet Engineering Task Force standards body voted down the Sender ID proposal. The IETF said Microsoft's decision to keep secret a patent proposal for the technology was unacceptable. Open-source groups also pulled their support of Sender ID, claiming its licensing restrictions were too strict. AOL agreed with the IETF fallout and added its own reasoning.
"AOL has serious technical concerns that Sender ID appears not to be fully, backwardly-compatible with the original SPF specification--a result of recent changes to the protocol and a wholesale change from what was first envisioned in the original Sender ID plan," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham wrote in an e-mail."
CB_===__-8a90fuds76
Good (Score:5, Informative)
SPF issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SPF issues (Score:3, Informative)
A little OT... (Score:2)
I myself have no opinion. I haven't admined a mail server in over 2 years and I am woefully not up on this subject.
Re:A little OT... (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically: SPF is also a good counter to one objection to IM2000 Internet mail, namely that it involves changing the structure of the mail system. If people sending mail and mail hosting companies are clearly willing to accept the massive structural changes that SPF will entail, they will be willing to accept the smaller structural changes that IM2000 Internet mail will entail.
For the VAST majority of sites there is NO structural change to the way they do email. For small companies (those most likely to have problems implmenting a new system) SPF is as simple as entering "v=spf1 mx -all" in a TXT record for their domain, that's IT! Even for a mid sized companie with multiple divisions with a couple mail servers and a couple domains implementing SPF was a 10 minute endevor, hell getting proper reverse DNS setup usually takes me several times that long due to the necessity of beating it into yet another ISP's head that yes the customer should get a valid reverse DNS entry and reverse DNS is MUCH less usefull for fighting spam and viruses.
Re:A little OT... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not exactly a proponent, but I can respond to most of his points;
* SPF breaks pre-delivery forwarding.
SPF doesn't break pre-delivery forwarding at all, you just need to include the machine forwarded to in your SPF record.
post-delivery forwarding is a problem, but at least in theory, it can be solved by only checking SPF records at the first receipt point,
or by having a smart checker that knows about your forwarding.
I.e. if Alice is sending to Bob, then there's a point at which the message leaves Alice's control, and enters Bobs.
Before that point, Alice can adjust her SPF record to include all possible point of egress.
After that point, Bob needs to check based only on the IP that entered his realm of control.
This may be hard for Bob to do, or beyond his understanding, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
* SPF hijacks existing DNS mechanisms.
Bullshit. SPF uses TXT records.
It's even RFC 1464 compliant, so it won't interfere with other TXT records (unless someone's already created the "v" tag)
It could have been made less likely to collide by using "spf1=" instead, but it doesn't hijack anything.
* SPF gives ISPs a "lock-in" weapon against their customers.
This one baffles me.
If you're using the address bob@example.com, then example.com already has you by the balls.
If you're using bob@vanitiydomain.tld then you are in control of your own SPF record, and can switch it to anything you like.
* SPF is useless for several entire classes of people.
That would be anyone who sends direct-to-mx email from random IPs.
Those people will have to change.
Sorry, sucks to be you.
The percentage of people in this class is very near zero.
* SPF relies upon DNS for security, but DNS isn't a security service.
Yeah, so?
No one said SPF was perfect, they said it was better than what we currently have (nothing.)
Spoofing DNS, while possible, is considerably harder than forging a from address.
If this were really a concern, we'd already have adopted one of the many "secure" dns alternatives.
* SPF is vulnerable to race conditions during database changes.
Yeah, so?
So is email in general.
* SPF creates new categories of third class citizenship.
Sheese - time to break out the tin foil hat.
The purpose is to discriminate against people who forge addresses.
I suppose some people will try and push all kinds of crap into, around, and on to SPF - but it's really innocuous as these things go.
* SPF doesn't actually address unsolicited bulk mail at all.
That is correct.
SPF is a tool against forgeries only.
It doesn't directly prevent email delivery at all.
* SPF hands Verisign its next unwelcome "innovation" on a platter.
If that's the worst thing you can think of for Verisign to do when they have complete control of the DNS system, then I have no respect for your imagination.
Verisign could create SPF records for existing domains.
Verisign could make resolving TXT records a "premium" service which costs money.
Hell, Verisign could just raise the fees for owning a domain name in
Yes, Verisign is an evil monopoly with near total control over the domain name system, and they can fuck you over at any time.
Get over it.
SPF didn't make them that way, nor will it contribute to their general evilness.
-- should you question authority?
Thanks. (Score:2)
Re:A little OT... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to send e-mail with my locally installed postfix or with an authenticating third party mail-server when I am on the go, because my employer doesn't offer SMTP services to the outside world. SPF would mean that I'd have to VPN into the lab everytime I want to send
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
As stated before (Score:3, Informative)
It is meant to make it easier to track down spammers if they happen to break an anti-spam law, as SPF prevents forgeries.
Yes, all a spammer has to do to spam you is to get a domain and set up an SPF record.
But at this point, you can track his ass down, complain to his upstream provider, and get him shut down.
It's a LOT harder to do that when the email is blatantly forged.
Saw this one coming a mile away... (Score:5, Funny)
Good. Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does implementing Microsoft's Caller-ID have to offer in addition to AOL's subscribers?
Joe-job fix (Score:3, Interesting)
Having finally persuaded my ISP that = (equals) is a valid character in a TXT record I was able to publish
Responsible ISP (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously the spammers, and DoSers have an ISP, and if their ISP were punished by upstream providers for allowing their network to emit this kind of crap, by blocking them until the problems are solved, maybe they'd use some initiative to solve these problems.
I do understand that most DoSers are not the fault of the user, but surely the ISP could notify the user, and force them to do something about it.
Re:Responsible ISP (Score:3, Informative)
So adding additional work to ISPs will / could often be the straw that broke the camels back. But at the same time I believe the best way to get ISPs working FOR eve
Re:Responsible ISP (Score:2)
One issue though is that if you push too hard, it will become *impossible* to make it so that an ISP can accept the risk involved in allowing businesses to run servers on their networks.
There has to be a balance.
I run my own email servers which are *extremely* secure. Viruses and spam do *not* eminate from my network. But I am lucky enough to find an ISP which is friendly to
Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it's time to simplify.
dump email all together in the corporate environment and opt instead for a more secure solution based on PKI or kerberos or any other host of security structure.
If some contact absolutely needs to receive something via email, no problem. "We will gladly send you an email, but you just can't send us one. Unless, of course, you wish to send it to an employee's private email adress; we don't accept email internally anymore."
"Sorry mr. corporate contact, you must log in to our site www.dmail.company.com and submit messages that way. We have had too many problems with spam and viruses.
there is a nice, lightweight client you can install if you don't wish to log in every time."
It seems to me it wouldn't be that difficult to use a non-email solution for your corporate mailing needs (like the aforementined dmail which i've been hearing so much about), and if another company's IT department can't handle that light technical strain, then it would seem that IT department needs a wake up call.
where are the flaws in this reasoning?
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, for the most part in the corperate world, you need to take all reasonable steps to accomadate those you do bussiness with. If you make it a nightmare, people will up and dump you.
This even applies to the big guys. Friend of mine works for Rainbird sprinklers. They are by far the biggest name in irrigaton equipment and basically anywhere that does home improvement sells Rainbird.... Except for Walmart.
The reason isn't because Walmart dumped Rainbird but because Rainbird dumped Walmart. Walmart made it very difficiult for Rainbird to do bussiness with them, demanding sacraficies Rainbird didn't want to make so Rainbird finally just refused to sell to them.
Well if you are a small company, this is even more true. If Altera told Cisco they'd no longer accept e-mail for anything, I imagine all Cisco routers would start including Xylinx FCPGAs instead.
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:2)
My point is (Score:2)
If you think something like banning e-mail will work for your bussiness, well go ahead and try, but don't be supprised if no one will deal with you.
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
A friend of mine worked for a food production company and they reached a point where they worked out they were not making enough company for a retailer. They were making a profit, but really, not much of a profit for the hassle required.
A lot of companies just seek volume - trade with anyone and everyone you can. Sometimes, some customers aren't worth having. The deal with these people
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't talk like this to your business partners (who pay you). When you fight for contracts and sales you can't just tell the customer "contact me only my way, or go away", because the customer will go away.
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
where are the flaws in this reasoning?
1) You aren't a businessman. Don't pretend you are, and certainly don't pretend you know how things should be when running one.
2) Businesses are there to make money. Thus, the cardinal rule of business is... don't say "no" to money. In any form. If you turn away customers by not being available for them, you are, in effect, saying "no" to money.
Show me that it won't result in having to say "Sorry mr. corporate contact..." and you mi
Re:Don't use email in the office anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
1. One major problem is that I want all my outgoing e-mail in ONE place (i.e. app). Whatever that is, it has to be easy to search, so I can find out who I told what. If the people I e-mail have got a different system to me, it makes it 100 times (or however many different organisations I contact) harder to sort out.
2. What you're essentially proposing is a change to the messaging infrastructure, which is probably a big reason for AOLs rejection.
3. It would restrict communication to some degree (make
I may hate AOL... (Score:3, Insightful)
Interop, Just Easier? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever Spam Solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I mean seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I mean seriously... (Score:2, Insightful)
The result was that literally overnight there appeared thousands of clueless n00bs with @aol.com addresses.
It made quite an impression at the time, and you're still seeing the fallout today.
The final nail in Microsoft's Patented Sender-ID (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks AOL (Score:2, Interesting)
I suddenly dont feel so bad for installing AIM to talk to strange women
I feel that what microsoft is looking to punish the witness for what the criminal has done with, although I may be wrong, the intention of profiting off the witness while making the victim feel they, being MS, are trying to helping them out.
How about something BETTER!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How about something BETTER!!! (Score:5, Informative)
SPF provides for a way to make sure the owner of a domain listed in the envelope from address permits the connecting server to deliver email on behalf of that domain. Unless I misread the draft, AMTP seems to rely wholy upon the conversation between the two servers, and a trivial rDNS/fDNS validation.
I would like to re-read the spec in a better frame of mind. In the meantime, if my initial analysis is incorrect, please correct me.
Neither Sender ID nor SPF stop forgery (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Neither Sender ID nor SPF stop forgery (Score:2, Interesting)
The main problem with GPG is a lack of (a) mail clients using the standard MIME method of sending GPG emails and (b)
Check out Yahoo's inaccurate paraphrasing... (Score:5, Interesting)
What? Since when did AOL reject it just because it's owned by Microsoft?
Link to the article [yahoo.com]...
For once AOL does something the media should be praising it for, yet they're practically insulting AOL publically...
"...would not adopt Microsoft's SenderID protocol because it has failed to win over experts leery of Microsoft's business practices."
I wonder if I'm the only one getting painfully tired of the way the news media paraphrases and misrepresents peoples'/groups' positions...
Re:Check out Yahoo's inaccurate paraphrasing... (Score:2)
I mean, they can provide friendly little links after each trademark so you can "tell (spam) your friends", but it's too much work to paste a URL that the writer's probably already got open on their screen, eh?
Re:Check out Yahoo's inaccurate paraphrasing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Check out Yahoo's inaccurate paraphrasing... (Score:2)
Whether it's Yahoo News, Reuters or CNN (or any other news agency), they all seem to have an amazing inability to just refer to the true source of the news, as though it's somehow required for them to add their own user-friendly "spin" on the story...
the irc log of #internet (Score:5, Funny)
Schizophrenia (Score:4, Interesting)
It's hardly surprising that some people aren't sure how to feel about AOL sometimes. On one hand, they adopt IE or kill some promising project and get hisses and boos. On the other, they occasionally support or initiate a nifty open source project, or take a position we're prone to like.
Seems to me... and I'm hugely guessing here... that there's two factions in AOL to consider. The tech people, and then marketing/legal/etc. The tech people can sometimes (not always) do some stuff that benefits people, and probably mean well in general in any case. As long as something remains under the radar of the rest of AOL's bunch, and/or results in lots of positive P.R., it lives. But if the legal department or someone panics, well... we all saw what happened to Nullsoft's gnutella implementation, initially. And AOL is kinda flip-flopping where Netscape is concerned, I think.
In this case, the tech guys over there probably pretty much had a lot of sway over the Sender-ID thing. The lawyers, marketing people, et al. have far more important things to worry about, I presume.
Re:Schizophrenia (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL develops an "Internet Expereince" for computer Newbies, their service is not for experts, and thats it. They DO dumb down their internet, for reason, because thats exactly what their costomers demand.
The ISP market has a lot of choice, unlike the OS market, and AOL caters for a particular type of market. They are not trying to cater for all users (though their Netscpae Online ISP may be an exception). Those AOL customers whinging that AOL doesnt allow this, AOL doesnt allow that, well thats because what is beign requested is not regarded as important to the average AOL user. The Average usere donesnt know what an SMTP server, iand they do not care about finding out. They just want to send email.
Those moaning about AOL, are free to switch. The majority CHOSE AOL, and are free to switch. Those non-AOL users who are moaning about AOL, again, whats it to do with you? you dont use their services, so why moan?
Secondly, that doesnt mean that AOL is titally unfriendly towards techs, though they do that using other "labels". FOr example, they did sponsor Mozilla, and paid the developers to do a great job in creating our browser, and dont say they got a payoff from Microsoft, because if you look at the figures, AOL still made a monatary loss on the whole Netscape/Mozilla thing. However as a result, we have Mozilla.
When dissolving Netscape, they gave full freedom to Mozilla, transfering copyright, etc. They COULD have been a bitch about it, but they didnt. You can compare their actions to almost like a parent who has a extremely talented child that "outgrew" the rules of the home. Instead of hiding the child, to destroying the child, it let the child go, with some money to help it make its own way.
Also about Netscape, there are somepeople who do NOT trust Mozilla just yet (my parents). Yet they still trust Netscape. Still providing Netscape (another loss to them) is a good thing.
ABout Nullsoft, whatever bad people talk about them, they still were instumental in turning WinAMP into a free (price) product. Ok its not Opensource, but at least we can create puligins and stuff easily, without sellign out to the devil, thanks to its fairly open standards.
I do not recall them going after XMMS either, dispite some similarities between the two.
AOL is not bad, its just different to what we expect, but its not bad, and i do think some of the bashing here is a little unfair. Save it for MS.
DomainKeys will not work. Crypto costs time and $! (Score:2, Interesting)
It won't work!
Cryptography costs time and money to use! Just look how long it takes to bring up a secured webpage (HTTPS)....
Now imagine if the entire World Wide Web was that way....
Not everybody on the internet have the fastest systems available for use. Even then, such systems would be overwhelmed by all the crypto they have to do in order to process email using the DomainKeys system.
Instead of time consuming crypto, why not use
A Flaw in SPF? (Score:2, Insightful)
My domain and mail is handled by my host, with one mail server sending mail for multiple domains (mine and other people who have an account with the host). The reverse DNS lookup for the mail server give the server's name (myhost.com) and not my domain's (mydomain.com) as it's shared, so mail from mydomain.com only has to come from myhost.
AOL vs Microsoft ? (Score:4, Funny)
From the horse mouth (Score:4, Informative)
Ref: http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg04
Swiped my post! "Patents have to be clear and pub. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I'm glad that people like it the second time around. Would be good if I got credit up front!
Re:Swiped my post! "Patents have to be clear and p (Score:5, Informative)
IT was MY POST that was STOLEN! [slashdot.org]
Re:Patents have to be clear and public (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article... (Score:3, Informative)
Graham added that while AOL will not check Sender ID for inbound messages, it will still publish records for outbound e-mail.
SFP will not prevent AOL from getting spam. (Score:5, Interesting)
And this doesn't prevent Spam. It prevents job jobs. If a spammer is willing to ID the domain his mail comes from and not spoof he can Spam you all he wants. Course with a legitimate domain name/IP# you can blacklist him too.
Your customer uses AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of those 'morons' are customers so people need to send mail to AOL.
Reading between the lines it's only a matter of time before AOL stops accepting mail from domains that don't publish SPF records. They already reject mail if your reverse DNS doesn't resolve. They're publishing their own too:Good for them.
Re:Your customer uses AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a max of 2,277 outgoing mail servers!
Re:AOL gets it? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:AOL gets it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Problem? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that it is from MicroSoft, not that it's patented, but that it's patented with a special license and it has unclear specification. The current license does not allow the transfer of the rights to a third party - therefore making it unimplementable on GNU Public Licensed programs. GPL requires that any modifications must be passed on for free (if ever want to pass it on), and MS license doesn't allow copying the source code and the license. Therefore, you can't implement Sender-ID for anyone else but for yourself.
Also that wiggle room around the specification is an alarming thing. MS - with many other companies - have shown that any gaps in the specification can and will be used by companies in competition. Given a chance, suppliers will make their product incompatible with other suppliers' products if they have the market share - thus increasing their market share further.
If we give them the power to choose what programs can deliver mail in the Internet, who are we going to blame but ourselves if they want to (ab)use that power? Instead, if they break an existing standard we can point our finger at them and say that their product does not meet the standard and therefore it's their fault that interoperability fails.
Re:The Problem? (Score:5, Informative)
However, the license is incompatible with the licenses used on virtually every mail server out there, and the implementation is significantly more complex.
Re:The Problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Problem? (Score:2)
Both of these now ship with XP SP2 (and they have been in the
Re:The Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid it's someone else who must get real. MS, as any other company, is required to extract as much profit as possible from any and all assets it owns, or else shareholders will file a lawsuit. This happens.
Besides, why MS would not do that? They can do it in a smart way - provide Windows users with a free license, and everyone else has to pay $1000 per license. Where will Linux or BSD be there? Who will be using these OSes for mail transfer? Hardly anyone, that's who.
You must look beyond your nose to see the danger, and it must be said "no" while it is still possible.
Re:Better Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The only partially useful modification is some form of authentication which would certify the origin of the SMTP connection. Just as I can telnet to a POP3 server and make it think I am a real POP3 client, an end user can make an SMTP server believe it is another server.
SPF offers a sleek way of authorizing what machines may deliver mail on behalf of a domain. I could trivialize it by comparing it to a domain owner-controlled authentication system for emails without requiring a central authentication repository or authority.
What is wrong with this implementation? Can you suggest a modification to SMTP that will acheive similar or better results? If not, then drop your argument, that stick, and step back from the dead horse.