bouncy bouncy

[firstfrost]

(I seem to have shifted from not-posting-at-all to posting-multiple-things.)

So, people get lots of spam. Much of this spam is forged to make it look like it's coming from themselves, or someone else at their domain.

Thus, many IT departments seem to come up with the clever idea: "We shall reject mail that appears to be from foo@ourdomain.com, which is being delivered to foo (or bar) @ourdomain.com, but which is coming from some external mail server." I mean, this looks like a no-brainer, right? Why would internal mail ever be trying to come from an outside source, unless it's Evil?

What this screws over is outside mailing lists. If foo@ourdomain.com sends mail to big-working-group@mit.edu, which has people from ourdomain.com on it, then you get a mail path of ourdomain.com -> mit.edu -> ourdomain.com. So mit.edu tries to hand the mail back to ourdomain.com, and ourdomain.com shrieks in horror, decides that MIT is an evil spammer, and bounces the mail back. Ironically[*], the bounce message has much less trouble getting back to the sender.

*: Is this ironic? All the sarcasm about Alanis Morissette has managed to convince me that things I think are ironic aren't necessarily at all.

Comments

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

The people who complain about Alanis Morissette misusing the word "ironic" are probably the most productive people on the planet, given how relentlessly they zero in on the single most important global issue for which they have relevant world-class expertise.

[bakedweasels.livejournal.com]

So I take it you're not a fan of Dave Eggers?

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

I had no idea Eggers had anything to say on the subject?

[bakedweasels.livejournal.com]

He has a lengthy anti-"ironic" rant as a footnote in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

[fredrickegerman.livejournal.com]

Mail.app on Macs seems to do this thing, too, which is really annoying. In spite of the fact that I keep telling it that no, really, you shouldn't consider mail with me as a sender to be spam by default.

(What's with the ~0 contrast on your comment box? Your colors have gone too far, I say!)