[ih] Update on filtered list posts

[Grant Taylor]

On 9/15/20 10:05 AM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via 
Internet-history wrote:
> is it possible to see what other words (minus profanity) the ISOC 
> filter considers as “inappropriate”?

+1 for access to the list somewhere

> isn't it a "violation" of email "protocol" (integrity/sanctity/trust) 
> to not summarily BOUNCE the “inappropriate” with an SMTP 550 reply 
> as opposed to just /dev/null'ng a "transgressor" (as it so silently 
> did with Karl's "hook-up" message)?

It is against the spirit of email delivery.  I think that it is not 
against the specification of SMPT.

As I understand it, this filtering happens outside of SMTP.  As such, 
SMTP did not fail in any way.

> the present behavior of the ISOC's mailer filter with respect to 
> "losing" email without any type of notification to anyone seems, 
> well, out-of-line/not congruent with email "norms", does it not?

It definitely violates the principle of least surprise ~> expectation.

> [who since the early 70's has never heard or experienced any email 
> delivery transport "operating" in this manner].

I've run into this a few times.

In almost every case, the people that put the filters in place, either 
PHBs directing or the technicians doing, didn't see the collateral 
damage or a way to avoid it and they felt the collateral damage was the 
lesser of the evils vs allowing the undesired email.

Quite frequently, the purported sender was assumed to be spoofed, as 
such bouncing the message would result in a Joe Job, which is another 
different problem.  Though, with the prevalence of SPF and DKIM, that's 
less likely now.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die