Bug#908865: exim4: Default CHECK_RCPT_REMOTE_LOCALPARTS blocks legal email addresses (in particular the % character)

[Rainer Dorsch]

Hi Marc,

thanks for your quick reply.

Am Montag, 17. September 2018, 13:01:11 CEST schrieb Marc Haber:
> Hi,
> 
> please feel free to do a local override of the macro. How to do this is
> explained in the package docs. 

That is exactly what I attempted by adding

# accept % in email addresses (local part, i.e. not domain) 
/etc/exim4/conf.d/main/00_localconfig

I hope that is the way it is intended by the exim4 Debian developers.

> Andreas might revise the default in the
> package, if it were my decision, I wouldn't change this, even if in
> these days where explicit SMTP routing is not even used any more by
> spammers.

Here I probably have not enough knowledge...

>From what I understand from RFC2822 the % is a character like any other character in the 
alphabet for the local-part

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.4.1

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.2.4

Why is there any disadvantage to allow it?

I particular, I do not understand the spam risk you mention and also Google did not help 
me :-/ ... Could you give me a pointer to more details? In particular do I carry a SPAM risk 
if I do the local modification to accept the % sign?

> 
> Please also note that it is clearly documented that this rule blocks
> addresses that are RFC-valid.

There are people which advise the opposite

https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/email_address_quiz/

but this is beyond my expertise to judge what are the implications  there....

Thanks again for your quick response
Rainer

-- 
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/
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