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Re: Spamming the World through Open Debian Mailinglists (Re: lists.debian.org has received bounces from you)



On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 03:21:46PM +0000, Stephen Gran wrote:
> <begin pedantry>
> RFC2822, section 3.3, is about date/time formats.  I suspect you mean 
> RFC2821, section 3.3, which does not quite say that.  It says:
> 
> "the DATA command should fail only [...] or if the server determines 
> that the message should be rejected for policy or other reasons."
> 
> It goes on to say:
> "Server SMTP systems SHOULD NOT reject messages based on perceived 
> defects in the RFC 822 or MIME [12] message header or message body."
> 
> So, while we are discouraged from rejecting based on poorly formatted
> MIME, MTA admins are by no means discouraged from rejecting mail at DATA
> time in general for site policy reasons.
> </pedantry>

<pedantry grade="worse" useful="not very">
It would be good if people stopped reading obsolete documents :) The current
SMTP RFC is 5321 (which is a "draft standard").  Of course, that particular
passage has not changed much:

"[...] the DATA command should fail only [...] if the server determines that
the message should be rejected for policy or other reasons. [...] Server SMTP
systems SHOULD NOT reject messages based on perceived defects in the RFC 822 or
MIME (RFC 2045 [21]) message header section or message body."

I find the example that follows the passage (even in 2822) illuminating: "In
particular, they MUST NOT reject messages in which the numbers of Resent-header
fields do not match or Resent-to appears without Resent-from and/or
Resent-date."

Basically, what it's saying is that RFC pedantry is not a valid rejection
reason.  I agree with Stephen's conclusion.
</pedantry>

-- 
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland
http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/

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