Subject: RE: "If you believe that the SPF concept is fundamentally flawed, please subscribe at http: //www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/"

From: "Sauer, Damon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 07:50:54 -0500

Please see:

http://www.virusbtn.com/articles/spambulletin/asrg/2004/10_4.xml

Regards,
Damon Sauer

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of John Levine
> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 10:15 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: "If you believe that the SPF concept is 
> fundamentally flawed, please subscribe at http: 
> //www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/"
> 
> 
> 
> >> Contrary to the promotions, SPF will not stop spam.
> >
> >Who is promoting SPF as an anti-spam solution?  I'd really like to 
> >know.
> 
> Let's take a look at http://spf.pobox.org.  Hey, look what it says:
> 
>   SPF is ushering in a new set of anti-spam systems, where email is
>   spam unless proven otherwise.
> 
> If history is any guide, some SPF fan will write back in a 
> huff and say "That doesn't say SPF is an anti-spam solution!  
> It just says that SPF is holding a flashlight and will lead 
> the actual anti-spam solutions to their seats!"
> 
> This kind of disingenuous doubletalk has characterized SPF 
> advocacy since its beginning, and is one of the many reasons 
> that the mainstream e-mail tech community holds SPF in 
> disdain.  That along with its egregious design mistakes and 
> its irreparably enormous error rate, of course.
> 
> SPF can help whitelist mail from fixed source senders you 
> already know.  That's what AOL uses it for, and it's an 
> adequate if overly complex means to that end.  If the SPF 
> crowd promoted it for that purpose, I don't think anyone 
> would have a problem with it.  But they don't and the smoke 
> long ago became unbreathable.
> 
> Regards,
> John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The 
> Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, 
> http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a > sneeze." - E.B. 
> White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web
> 
> 

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