[Mailman-Users] non-subscribers getting through--email address in "Real Name"

Joseph Brennan brennan at columbia.edu
Wed Jul 25 16:27:26 EDT 2018


On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 8:20 PM Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users <
mailman-users at python.org> wrote:

>
> > Right, thereby causing a great deal of entirely legitimate mail that
> > DMARC cannot describe to go missing, along with a certain amount of spam.
>
> "legitimate mail that DMARC cannot describe"  That sounds distinctly
> like a problem with the DMARC specification, /not/ with use there of.


Well it is. The problem is that DMARC's notion of "alignment" contradicts
RFC 822, 2822, 5322, namely '''The "From:" field specifies the author(s) of
the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s)
responsible for the writing of the message.''' and contradicts RFC 821,
2821, 5321 that describes the MAIL FROM address as the address used "to
report errors". Mailing lists fully comply with the standard by keeping the
writer's address in the Header From and by putting the address to report
errors in the MAIL FROM. Nothing in email standards stated or even implied
that the two addresses need to be the same.

Of course a system can reject any email message for any reason or no
reason, so all I can do is point out that lack of "alignment" is a silly
reason for rejecting list mail. For transactional mail from sources like
financial institutions, where the sender can state that the two addresses
should "align", then it makes a lot more sense.

Joseph Brennan


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