Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by RawInfoSec 3871 days ago
It's email. SMTP. It's not instant messaging and it sure isn't a browser.

Point blank, it's easy to see that this is by design and not by quirk or fault. If anything Google are looking to maintain usability by keeping as close to RFC spec as possible.

One of the biggest problems facing email today is SPAM, and general deliverability. Once you veer far off spec it gets a lot more difficult to manage these two issues.

For example, look how nice Greylisting worked in theory, until you realize that most IT or hosting companies don't have a clue how to configure an MTA within RFC specs and do silly things like retrying delivery every 5 mins.

When your dealing with complex systems, it's better to keep each part of that system well oiled and within a predictable spec. And then Microsoft adds HTML support to Outlook so that marketing execs can throw 15 sales related images and some wording about saving trees...

Often, solution providers should have given an alternative when asked to do things that break from standards. As we often say in this field, "Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should."

Kc/

1 comments

>look how nice Greylisting worked in theory, until you realize that most IT or hosting companies don't have a clue how to configure an MTA within RFC specs and do silly things like retrying delivery every 5 mins.

that's what needs to happen for greylisting to work.

it's spambots that don't have the retry ability.

Thanks, but you misunderstand my point. Actually you pretty much prove my point that most MTAs are run by those who can't grasp that there are RFC standards out there.

An MTA should never resend after only 5 minutes. It should wait at least 25 minutes before even the first retry.

I've seen many set up to retry every 60 seconds, giving up after 5 tries. One IT tech even told me it was so his boss doesn't have to wait 3 days to get a non-delivery report! Lol.