Re: More Sendgrid trouble?

On Thu, May 08, 2025 at 05:22:32PM -0400, John Levine wrote:
> It appears that Marc <[email protected]> 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/

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