[PLUG] Helo policy...

[plug_0 at robinson-west.com]

RFC 821                                                      August 1982
                                            Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

    3.5.  OPENING AND CLOSING

       At the time the transmission channel is opened there is an
       exchange to ensure that the hosts are communicating with the hosts
       they think they are.

       The following two commands are used in transmission channel
       opening and closing:

          HELO <SP> <domain> <CRLF>

          QUIT <CRLF>

       In the HELO command the host sending the command identifies
       itself; the command may be interpreted as saying "Hello, I am
       <domain>".

Okay, but a lot of people seem to think that helo checking is futile and
more trouble than it's worth.  I run a postfix relay on my firewall  
perimeter where I wonder what the best practice is in this day and  
age.  I asked Opus
and got a completely worthless answer back of, "you can do whatever you want."
By domain in this excerpt, there is not enough context to know what is being
referred to specifically.  Is it a DNS domain name or could it be some other
kind?  How about rejecting a helo of localhost, friend, of the domain name
of my own server?

If one drops to just using spamassassin to tag spam, the problem with
this approach is that spam isn't left on the spammer's server.  Even
if you have procmail shove suspected spam into a spam folder, it is
still on your system.  The beauty of accept and classify is that you
still receive if the tests are wrong, but I have yet to see
spamassassin be wrong.

What is EHLO compared to HELO?

Michael C. Robinson

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