On Wed, 07 May 1997 13:51:36 -0400 Brad Knowles <[log in to unmask]> said:
> Specifically, source-routed mail has historically been the source of
>no end of problems, and frequently abused by less savoury types in
>attempts to ensure that they don't have to deal with their bounces,
>etc..., we consider this an operational issue and will refuse to accept
>mail with source-routed envelope addresses.
All you have to do then is ignore the source route, which is allowed by
RFC1123. I cannot think of any reason why ignoring the source route would
not address your concerns. Incidentally, if a spammer doesn't want to
deal with bounces, there is MAIL FROM:<>... Or did AOL also start
rejecting such messages? This would make AOL useless for managing a
mailing list, among other things.
> At some point in time, the RFC 1123 "Robustness Principle" (section
>1.1.2) continues the propagation of more and more bad systems,
I'm sorry, but the "bad system" here is AOL's, which not only fails to
observe a very reasonable RFC1123 rule (ignore the source route if you
don't want to support it, we're talking about an entire line of code
here), but quotes a completely irrelevant standard (RFC822) and verse to
justify a RFC821-level behaviour which takes place before the RFC822
header is even transferred to AOL's system. I find it somewhat offensive
that AOL then refers to the sending systems as "bad systems" that we will
never be able to get rid of. These systems are doing something which used
to be a mandatory procedure in order to comply with Internet standards,
and which is totally harmless as you are allowed to ignore source routes
completely if you do not want to implement or honour them.
> Essentially as much has been observed by various Internet mail
>experts, many of whom are working on drafting the upcoming standards.
Brad, maybe I'm not reading this in the light in which it was meant, but
there are probably more Internet mail experts among the people you are
sending this message to than in the group you mentioned, and as you know
technical people tend to be independent thinkers. This isn't to say that
the people on the DRUMS group aren't mail experts, but DRUMS doesn't have
a monopoly on mail experts, and I'm sure you realize that many people
signed off after getting tired of receiving 100-150 DRUMS messages a day
with Dan Bernstein flame wars and other kindergarten arguments. It also
doesn't make much sense to ask people to submit to the wisdom of a task
force working on new Internet drafts which may or may not become Internet
standards in a couple years, let alone industry standards, when at the
same time you refuse to submit to the wisdom of existing Internet
standards with their existing user base. Again I am sorry if I took this
in the wrong light, but this is just the impression that I got from your
message, whether it was meant or not.
> I'd like to see this default changed in upcoming releases of
>ListServ, so that in the future, email with source-routed envelope
>addresses will not be generated unless you explicitly configure it to do
>so.
LISTSERV does not generate source routes, nor has it ever done that. Even
back in 1986, LISTSERV had a strong no-source-routes stance. However, if
presented with a source route it does ignore it gracefully, as you would
expect. The source routes come from LMail, a MTA for VM (also from
L-Soft) which can be configured to implement the original RFC821 reverse
path behaviour where you insert source routes in the MAIL FROM: address
(at no point is a source route added to the RFC822 header). Nowadays the
default setting is not to generate source routes, but this has not always
been the case and some sites may still have that option enabled in their
configuration file, or may have enabled it for their own reasons. They
should probably change it (change 'SOURCE_ROUTES = 1' to 'SOURCE_ROUTES =
0' in LOCAL SYSVARS), but AOL should definitely not reject MAIL
FROM:<@XYZ.EDU:[log in to unmask]> when it does accept MAIL FROM:<[log in to unmask]>.
Even setting aside the fact that the standards require AOL to accept this
syntax, it just does not make any technical sense to reject it, and it
leads to the loss of legitimate mail for AOL's customers.
Eric
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