SPF and mailing lists

[Shachar Shemesh]

Hi all,


I have a client that is an academic institute. They set up a mailing 
list server for their students, so they can communicate within courses 
and such. When we try to send email out, however, Google starts 
complaining, pointing us at 
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81126. Among other 
things, this suggests we set up SPF for our emails, and use consistent 
"from" addresses.


While both suggestions seem like good suggestions on first review, 
digging just a little deeper shows that they are practically impossible 
to implement. Any SPF record I put on the machine will only apply to 
emails appearing to originate from "lists.academy.ac.il". Since this is 
a mailing list, most actual emails will arrive from either teachers 
("teacher at academy.ac.il") or from students ("student at gmail.com"). 
Neither will have a valid SPF record.


It appears that, once again, spam has brought in casualties.


I am trying to tell Mailman to rewrite the sender's address to be that 
of the list, but that seems like a fairly great sacrifice in sender 
identity. It is entirely possible that in a couple of weeks enough gmail 
users white list the server for google to get the hint. I simply don't know.


If anyone has any constructive suggestions how to make things work 
smoother, please share


Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com


-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com

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