Why can't people correctly configure Mail and DNS correctly these days.
If all legitimate mail servers had their forward and reverse DNS mapping
configured correctly I could simply use the postfix
reject_unknown_reverse_client_hostname, and instantly get rid of 10s of
1000's of unwanted spam messages.
However there are many servers set up in NZ where the forward and
reverse DNS do not match, or there are no PTR records at all. After all
this is outlined in RFC 1912 (section 2.1) and RFC 1033
Most of the big ISP mail servers are OK, but then they have customers
running their own mailservers and this is where the problem lies. I have
some numbers from tests over the weekend and it doesn't look good.
I am being too hopeful to expect mailservers to be configured
correctly? I'm stuck between wanting to do things properly and help
reduce SPAM on one side, and having customers on the other saying why
can't I get mail from XXX.
While I can make an effort to try and contact the administrators of
these mail servers the shear numbers make it difficult and even then i
imagine the response would be 'well i can deliver mail to xxxx so it
must be your systems that are broken'.
I know this isn't a silver bullet by any means, but every little helps.
Any comments?
Phil
