Indeed there are problems with SPF. SMTP is a very flexible and relaxed system. SPF is not a "solution" it is merely a kludge. A way for trying to stem the tied of SPAM to give us more time to find a real solution. This kludge should be fairly good at helping defend against spam if it is adopted widely. However JBP is much like many other nay sayers. He provides many reasons not to adopt a system, gives you all the flaws in it but doesn't provide a decent practical alternative. I think we all know SPF isn't perfect so his arguments add nothing new.I've been thinking over this for a while, and I'm still undecided. While some of the practical reasons SPF might be a pain in the ass for some people don't apply to me (most of my mail is run through servers I control and can use SMTP AUTH on, so the issue of sending mail from networks not 'allowed' to send mail for a given domain isn't an issue), there are other problems with its current implementation http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/smtp-spf-is-harmful.html
That article was written by the guy who came up with SPF, the founder of pobox.com, a major mail-forwarding service. Hence it was very pro SPF.The May Linux Journal had an article on SPF as well, although I didn't read it well enough at the time to discuss. They were very much in favour of it, from what I remember.
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