[ih] Consider the mess

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/10/2024 11:55 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> enhanced use of DMARC


The convention for achieving successful delivery, when transiting a 
mailing is, in effect, to route around DMARC.

That is, the mailing list changes the From: field email address to be 
the mailing list rather than the original author. So a receiving site 
will not trigger DMARC analysis for the Author's domain name.

In effect, this means that the From: field has been coerced to be what 
the Sender: field is intended for.  Namely, an indication of a handler, 
not an author.

In order to preserve a clean copy of the actual author information, 
there is now a spec for an additional email address field, uncreatively 
named Author:.

The premise is that it can survive mailing list transit, unmodified.  
There is a claim that bad actors will somehow abuse this, but I haven't 
seen an analysis of what that would be or why it would work.

However I also haven't seen any uptake for the Author: field.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social