Re: Why SRS really sucks

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Tom Lahti wrote:

> >b) When a domain is abusing SRS to the point of clogging your
> >    quarantine, my choices (and any other admin dealing with
> >    40000+ forged emails to a 6 person office) are to reject *all*
> >    mail from the domain, or heuristically try to reject only the mail
> >    they are abusing.
> 
> The former is your only RFC-compliant alternative.  If you 
> heuristically try to reject only the mail they are abusing, its is 
> [a] a violation of RFC, and [b] allows the abuser to continue what 
> he's doing, shifting the burden of his own administration onto those 
> trying to sort out his garbage.  The right thing to do is to force 
> him to sort out his own garbage but rejecting the whole domain until 
> he fixes it.

I hate to tell you this, but we block specific users all the time -
irrespective of SRS.  When '[email protected]' (to take a recent example) sends
us hundreds of spam, into the blacklist he goes.  There is no
reason for us to block legit yahoo users just because of one
miscreant.  If a bunch of users whose cryptic localpart begins
with 'SRS' start spamming us - into the blacklist they go.

(Spamming via SRS has not actually happened to me.  I am just taking the
original posters complaint seriously.  It is entirely possible
that the "well known provider" forwarding him all the spam via SRS
is legitimately doing so because he himself asked them to - which
is not a good idea if you check SPF and the forwarder does not.)

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <[email protected]>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.