[zaarn]

>It totally should be. If you use SPF and DKIM, that should override distrust of IP addresses.

There are several IPs that are completely banned on my firewall because they send shitloads of spam over dozens of domains. And some IPs are just inherently not trustworthy (Tor exit nodes, North Korean IPs, etc.)

Everyone can setup a SPF and DKIM record on their domain. It's not hard.

IPs have reputation and you better deal with it because most sysadmins on your receiving end won't deal with any special snowflake configuration.

This isn't exclusive to Gmail, this is basically any mail service and server out there.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> There are several IPs that are completely banned on my firewall because they send shitloads of spam over dozens of domains.

I understand that that is the case. I said that it shouldn't be the case and why. So, what's your point?

> And some IPs are just inherently not trustworthy (Tor exit nodes, North Korean IPs, etc.)

Noone is saying you should be trusting those IPs. I said domain trust should override IP distrust. So, again, what is your point?

> Everyone can setup a SPF and DKIM record on their domain. It's not hard.

Which is obviously the premise of using them to override IP distrust? So ... what is your point?

> IPs have reputation and you better deal with it because most sysadmins on your receiving end won't deal with any special snowflake configuration.

I think I wouldn't write "It totally should be" if that were the current reality, would I? So ... what is your point in explaining what I am obviously aware of?

Also, you might be surprised, but "special snowflake configuration" is how every change starts. So, if your argument were to be taken seriously, we should never have introduced SPF, because the first person to use SPF had a very special snowflake configuration indeed.

> This isn't exclusive to Gmail, this is basically any mail service and server out there.

Erm, yeah, thanks for repeating half a dozen times the obvious premise of my comment.

[zaarn]

>Noone is saying you should be trusting those IPs. I said domain trust should override IP distrust.

I don't trust certain IPs. Why should the presence of a SPF or DKIM override my trust of these IPs? If that is the case, why should it be for any other IP?

>Which is obviously the premise of using them to override IP distrust?

Which is my premise for why having them override IP trust is completely useless. There is nothing involved in the process of setting up SPF or DKIM that would make me trust a domain if the IP is not trusted.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Nothing about the presence of SPF or DKIM should override distrust of an IP, just as the presence of an IP shouldn't override distrust of a domain, that's simply confusing different functions. Neither SPF nor DKIM nor IP provide trust, what they provide is identity. Identity is the basis for reputation. And reputation is the basis for trust.

When you use IP blocklists, say, you are effectively using a reputation database that maps an identity (a client's IP address) to a reputation score that heuristically reflects how well the owner of that address space has guarded the address against use by spammers.

Equally, you can have a database of reputation scores for domains that reflect how well the owner of that domain has guarded the domain against use by spammers.

So, the existence of an authenticated domain identity, as established through SPF or DKIM, should override the IP address identity as the basis for determining the reputation of the sender. The identity alone never provides trust, it is only the key for looking up reputation in some database to base your trust on, and to store any reputation feedback under (like, when an email is marked as spam by the recipient). If your database says that my domain is trustworthy, then you should accept emails from that domain even if they come from a tor exit node, and if you determine that it is spam after all, that should lower the reputation score of the domain, not of the tor exit node.

[zaarn]

>If your database says that my domain is trustworthy, then you should accept emails from that domain even if they come from a tor exit node, and if you determine that it is spam after all, that should lower the reputation score of the domain, not of the tor exit node.

How would you establish trust in your domain from a tor exit node?

Home connections that send email are 99.9% of the time involved in a spam sending botnet. Those IPs are almost always entirely distrusted.

So you can't build trust into your domain without getting a both a trusted domain on a trusted TLD on a trusted IP.

The identity issue is not of concern since there is no good way to tell if the IP of a domain's mail server changed to a tor exit node because it was compromised, sold or otherwise maliciously claimed or if the owner legitimately did it. Lots of people will therefore treat changing the endpoint for mail as a new identity (for good reason).

>Equally, you can have a database of reputation scores for domains that reflect how well the owner of that domain has guarded the domain against use by spammers.

This already exists, multiple domains. Any spam blacklist operates via such reputation scores. It's utter pain to get your reputation fixed on these once you're in bad standing.

These go for both IPs and Domains. SPF and DKIM are a great way of avoiding trashing your reputation because some spammer is sending under your domain. But we already have tools for reputation.

If you build an IP reputation database, you'll quickly find out that Home IPs will get trash reputation regardless of if you think they should be allowed to send anything. (That's not even mentioning that Home IPs aren't stable)

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> How would you establish trust in your domain from a tor exit node?

Presumably, you wouldn't? But just because you can't establish trust this way, doesn't mean you couldn't maintain it that way, does it?

> So you can't build trust into your domain without getting a both a trusted domain on a trusted TLD on a trusted IP.

Yeah, so what? You can't upgrade an operating system without installing it first ... therefore you can't upgrade it? What's your point? Maybe you still need a "static IP" to gain reputation. Maybe someone finds a different solution for building reputation. Why should we keep one unnecessary restriction just because there is another currently necessary restriction? Maybe someone builds a sort of "new domain reputation escrow system"? You pledge 1 bitcoin (or whatever) that gets donated to charity if a panel of judged from the internet community decides that you used your domain to spam, and in return you get a reputation boost in a public database that email servers can check? Who knows, there are endless options for solving that second problem, which really have nothing to do with the first problem.

> The identity issue is not of concern

Erm ... you do understand that without identity, there can not be reputation, right? Even if the only thing you do is that you trust emails coming from a particular IP address because of good experiences with emails coming from that IP address, that only works because the IP address provides identity. The equality of client IP addresses between two SMTP sessions is the only thing that allows you to come to the conclusion that "this is the same entity that didn't send spam last time". This is all about identity and identity only.

> since there is no good way to tell if the IP of a domain's mail server changed to a tor exit node because it was compromised, sold or otherwise maliciously claimed or if the owner legitimately did it.

There is no good way to tell if a domain changed ownership to a spammer even if the IP of the mail server does not change. There is no way to tell if an IP address that didn't spam before changed ownership to a spammer. There never is a way to just know that some identity has not become a spammer. The involvement of a tor exit node is completely irrelevant to all of this.

You never know whether the next connection from an identity with good reputation is spam. You can't. That just isn't how reputation systems work. The point of a reputation system is that it creates an incentive to protect your identity against abuse because otherwise your identity will be muted.

> Lots of people will therefore treat changing the endpoint for mail as a new identity (for good reason).

Well, I can't tell whether "lots of people" do that, but it's certainly a terrible idea. If you have a business relationship with another company, and that company happens to move their email server to a different provider, how would it be anything but a completely braindead idea to penalize their emails for that in your spam filter when the emails are authenticated via SPF and DKIM as still coming from the same domain, and in at least that case thus also from the same company?

> These go for both IPs and Domains. SPF and DKIM are a great way of avoiding trashing your reputation because some spammer is sending under your domain. But we already have tools for reputation.

Yeah, and those tools build on SPF and DKIM ... your point being?

> If you build an IP reputation database, you'll quickly find out that Home IPs will get trash reputation regardless of if you think they should be allowed to send anything.

What is your point? I am not even sure if this is supposed to be an objection?! I mean, a lot of what you write isn't wrong, but just completely besides the point. I suggest that positive domain reputation should override negative IP reputation, and in response you point out that dynamic IPs have negative reputation ... when that is exactly the reason why I suggest that positive domain reputation should override negative IP reputation!?

And no, of course the fact that I think that domain reputation should override IP reputation does not influence the reputation of dynamic IP addresses ... why would anyone think that it would?!

> (That's not even mentioning that Home IPs aren't stable)

Again: Your point being?