[Dovecot] Deferred emails on alias emails

[Jehan Pagès]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 7:37 PM, Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com> wrote:

> But if you relay any spam and get blacklisted for it, you will be the one
> that
> suffers. The blacklists don't care what your point of view is or if you
> generated the spam or just relayed it.
>
> Then everyone on your server will suffer for the actions of another.
>
> That is why ISP's try and block as much spam as they can.
>
> Society is full of entities that decide what is good for you or not.
>


Yes that's true and for many of them, I really don't agree that it is "the
way to do". In some dictatorial country, they would say that sending an
email criticizing your governement is bas (is it spam?! Maybe for these
governments), and then you would go to jail. This is not because "things are
this way" that they are the right way.


>
> The Government decides that driving too fast is dangerous, so they set
> speed
> limits.
>
> Someone might get some tainted food from a manufacturer, and they are
> stopped
> from shipping anymore goods until it can be determined what happened.
>
> Drinking and driving is dangerous to others, so you are not allowed to do
> it.
>
> Spam is a bane to the normal flow of e-mail, and is considered by some as
> theft of service since you are stealing someone elses paid for bandwidth to
> send the junk to people that don't want it anyway.
>

Really, I try, but I cannot see the parallel between just forwarding
messages (as I was asked to when setting this alias!) and getting other
people's live in danger.


>
>
> I stop a lot of spam before it ever enters or leaves my servers. It is just
> good practice, no matter how Libertarian my users might be.
>
> Your servers are yours, and if someone wants to use your server to relay
> mail,
> they should have to also follow good practice. If your server sends me
> junk,
> it will get blacklisted. I will not look at the messages and see if they
> came
> from someone else, and most other systems won't either. You forward it, you
> are considered just as guilty.
>

I won't forward spam to you, I already told you. This is just an email alias
for a friend. It is just a email translation for a single external email
which has been explicitely asked. My smtp server is not an open relay for
any organized spammer who would like to forwards hundreds of spams to the
world... Nobody can use my server for spamming the world, so neither your
server.


> If your friend robs a bank, and you are "just driving the car" you still go
> to
> jail with him, don't you? The police won't let you go because it isn't
> "your
> problem".
>

No because you participate actively to the robbery.
But let's just say that you are a taxi that passes by and you don't know
that the guy is a robber and has a bank's money in his bag because you are
not here to investigate on all your customers nor to look in their bag. As
long as the guy don't ask you to drive fast over speed limitation or to try
to flee the cops, then you have no reason to be suspicious, do you? Then you
just drive your customer and leaves him his intimacy. If ever the cops ask
to stop your car (then the taximan just stops), you should not be sent to
jail. And really you should have nothing to be blamed for in such situation.
You provide a service: getting people from one place to another, and you
just do it when you are asked to.

The reason of this all is that this is not your job to spy on anyone, trying
to guess if they do bad things, or whatever. This is among the worse that
could happen in a society and results in a society of denunciation, where
you cannot trust anyone (not even your family or friends), where everyone
spies each other, etc.

Of course all of this change if you are sure that the guy is a robber (for
instance, you saw him rob the bank with his gun for instance). Then you
would not drive him (but not because this is the law for my own, but just
because it is bad) of course. That's the same for spam. If ever you are
sure, of course, don't send. Still as I say again and again: the problem is
to be sure! If you have even a slight uncertaincy, then what should you do?
Refuse him the lift? Maybe he was running because his wife is going to have
her baby and he needs to go back fast. Or he is going to miss his fly or his
job meeting... You don't know and that's not because you think this guy
"look strange" for instance that you should refuse him in your car. This
leads also to bad behavior (if one can accept this, then one can accept to
refuse people on "liking their face or not"...).



>
> Rant over!
>
>
Anyway I have the impression that we may never agree... I don't know if we
should continue this discussion on this list. ;-)

Jehan