Re: Realisticness of header rearrangement

On Apr 06 2004, Mark E. Mallett wrote:
> 
> My perspective is that the filter markings (a la "Tagged") are for
> historical record only.  A filter consumer (e.g. the MUA that uses the
> output of a filter) can only trust the ones inserted locally and
> shouldn't be relying on these historical tags.  As I mentioned before,
> I would want the filter consumer to operate on fixed tags that are
> produced by the local filter suite, and *not* on the archival tags
> such as the "Tagged" record.  I am not really sure what all the fuss

Does that mean that you want to list all your local filters in a 
dialog box of the MUA (or equivalent, maybe a system configuration
file)? How else could you distinguish local filters from spoofed filters?

> 
> I just don't see the point of finding ways to trust filters outside
> your own domain of control.  Inside your own domain of control, you
> don't use the historical-format tags for anything other than, well, a
> history.  For interpreting the result of your local filter(s) you use
> fixed tags that are erased and then regenerated.

We're not necessarily talking about trusting filters outside of your
domain, how do you make sure you trust your own filters? 

You've got an implicit list of local filters accessible to your MUA,
which needs to be kept up to date (the MUA can't do this
automatically, as it would have to be able to discover which filters
to trust).

If your local filters want to cooperate, they'll have to be able to
access this same list.

There's also the question of what is "your domain". If you get mail
via pop3, does your ISP's spam filter qualify as "your domain"? If so,
you'll need to be kept up to date when they change their spam filters
around, so you can update your MUA settings.

This is all quite doable manually, but it's harder to automate, to my
mind at least. Maybe I'm missing something.

-- 
Laird Breyer.