Re: RBL report..

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 04:28:39PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 01:15:27PM -0800, Larry Gilbert wrote:
> > Why is murphy.debian.org not adding a "Received:" header to show where
> > messages are originating?  This information is useful when trying to
> > track down actual spammers.  Is this being deliberately omitted or does
> > qmail just normally not include this info?
> 
> Some MTA's -- and I don't know which ones -- apparently choke if there is
> more than n bytes' worth of Received: headers.
> 
> So, as I understand it, these are stripped out by murphy to help make sure
> the list mails get to all the recipients.

they are stripped out by smartlist on murphy. it would be easy enough to
stop it from doing so (and has been requested at least once). whether
that happens or not remains to be seen.

> A person who runs an SMTP listener on their own box could, of course,
> be sure to run a non-broken MTA, but some people don't do that because
> they've been intimidated into using a smarthost, which might run just
> such a broken MTA.

this is complete bullshit. sending and receiving mail is entirely
unrelated - or, more precisely, the relationship between the host(s) you
use to relay your outbound mail and the host(s) you use to pick up your
incoming mail from is completely and utterly arbitrary.

the reason why most dialup users receive mail at a remote mail server
(e.g. their ISP or a hotmail/yahoo/whatever account) is because they
a) don't have a domain or an MX record, b) get one or more free email
addresses along with their dialup account, c) don't bother setting up
uucp (which is the only reliable way of receiving mail for a domain on a
dialup address - SMTP delivery to dynamic IP addresses just doesn't work
reliably, and can not work reliably even if the end-user does make use
of one of the dynamic dns services)


> The anti-spam bigots enjoy seeing catch-22's like this.

the anti-DUL bigots love spreading disinformation and bullshit like this
to backup their shaky claims.

craig

--
craig sanders