From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 13:01:31 CST
David Barr <barr@visi.com> suggested:
> Let me propose the following (wordy) compromise:
> ------
> The mailbox in the From-content SHOULD be a valid address, belonging
> to the poster(s) of the article, or person or agent on whose behalf
> the post is being sent (see Sender). When, for political or other
> reasons the poster wishes to indicate that the address is not
> a valid email address, the From-content SHOULD be an address which
> ends in the top level domain of ".invalid" [RFC 2606].
>
> NOTE: The use of ".invalid" is to provide an aid to mail systems
> so that addresses known to be munged can be indentified and
> delivery aborted without excess load on the net. User agents
> SHOULD identify such addresses and notify the user when attempting
> a personal email reply.
>
> Injecting agents that have authentication information MAY choose to
> enforce the From-content based on the poster's authenticated
> identity.
> ------
May I suggest that the last paragraph read:
If an injecting agent determines that an address is not deliverable or
not authorized to the poster, it MUST reject the article.
Note that this does not require any such validation, it simply requires
that if the validation is done and fails the injecting host MUST reject,
and that the means of determining validity is left as an implementation.
Hopefully this will satisfy everyone, by not requiring validity checks
which can't be done, but requiring correct action if the server chooses
to perform checks and they fail. I see that as the union of the possible
and desirable.
-- bill davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com) Prodigy Internet Server Group Project Leader, USENET news 914-448-1241