[Asrg] mail security

[Bill Cole]

John Leslie wrote, On 1/23/09 9:13 AM:
> Ian Eiloart <iane at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:
>> --On 21 January 2009 12:27:56 -0500 John Leslie <john at jlc.net> wrote:
>>
>>> However, there are a limited number of ways that forwarding might be
>>> shown in the trace headers, so it should be practical to determine that
>>> a forwarding is documented (though possibly forged).
>>>
>>> We then have a quite different situation from what raw SPF processing
>>> would indicate. Thus I claim the rules deserve to be relaxed (without
>>> going into detail how).
> 
>    The point I was attempting to make is that SPF records _can_ accurately
> reflect sender policy, while SPF processing will incorrectly indicate a
> violation of it.

There's also a subtle variation on that...

It was discussed (even here) in the early development of SPF that a trailing 
'-all' can and perhaps should  be read as a 'do not forward' policy 
statement by a domain owner. That was not considered a valuable feature by 
the people who ended up promoting SPF, but there are people who publish such 
records with the intent of expressing such a policy.

Whether such a policy should be within the authority of a domain owner is a 
knotty question.