Full Disclosure: Re: What makes Yahoo! a good merger candidate?

[Chris 'Chipper' Chiapusio <chipper () llamas net>]

On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 11:40:06AM -0600, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> They're also the first mail server I've ever connected to that won't accept 
> user () domain tld and insists on <user () domain tld> instead.  So, I'm not 
> surprised to find that they 250 everything you type in.
>
> I guess RFCs are even more meaningless now than they always have been.   :-(
Please review http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2821.html to fully understand a
modern SMTP transation, I've included the appropriate excerpts for this
thread:


3.3 Mail Transactions
[...]
    The first step in the procedure is the MAIL command.

       MAIL FROM:<reverse-path> [SP <mail-parameters> ] <CRLF>

    This command tells the SMTP-receiver that a new mail transaction is
    starting and to reset all its state tables and buffers, including any
    recipients or mail data.  The <reverse-path> portion of the first or
    only argument contains the source mailbox (between "<" and ">"
    brackets), which can be used to report errors (see section 4.2 for a
    discussion of error reporting).
[...]
    However, in practice, some servers do not perform recipient
    verification until after the message text is received.  These servers
    SHOULD treat a failure for one or more recipients as a "subsequent
    failure" and return a mail message as discussed in section 6.  Using
    a "550 mailbox not found" (or equivalent) reply code after the data
    are accepted makes it difficult or impossible for the client to
    determine which recipients failed.


Tell us again how Yahoo is not adhering to the RFCs.  While quoting RFC's to
this list is fairly lo-tech, people really should check fact before making
a blatanly foolish statement about one of the largest email providers in
the world.  Strict adherence to RFC is the first and simplest step in
fighting spam.

> Who knew.
Indeed.
> -- 
> Paul Schmehl (pauls () utdallas edu)
> Senior Information Security Analyst
> The University of Texas at Dallas
> http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/
Chris 'Chip' Chiapusio

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