On Mon, 21 May 2007 11:54:36 PDT, Roger Marquis said:
Are there sites that accept mail from domains without a valid MX/A record?
Depends what you call "valid". A lot of sites get *real* confused when they find out that the MX for foo.com is where foo.com's *inbound* mail servers live, and that their *outward* facing mail servers are someplace totally different (yes, there's *still* places that get this wrong - obviously, not being able to talk to any of the 800-pound gorillas or even the 200-pound dachsunds out there doesn't cause the sites to acquire kloo). Then there's all the "valid" issues caused by "domain on MAIL FROM doesn't match the EHLO and/or PTR lookups" that SPF and similar schemes haven't succeeded in curing... But in general, if a non-null MAIL FROM: arrives, and the purported domain comes up NXDOMAIN or similar *totally* unreachable (as opposed to just hinky), you're totally justified in either 4xx or 5xx'ing the sucker, because if you 250 it and then have to generate a bounce, you're left holding the bag. But again, just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean there's probably lots of places that still do it... Or as a co-worker who lurks here said the other day: "212.150.245.56 resolves to 212.150.245.56.245.150.212.in-addr.arpa And they want to know why we block it."