Paul's Mailfrom (Was: IETF SMTP Working Group Proposal at smtpng.org)
Jeroen Massar
jeroen at unfix.org
Mon Aug 26 23:54:39 UTC 2002
John Kristoff wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 00:59:49 +0200
> "Jeroen Massar" <jeroen at unfix.org> wrote:
> > Nice rant Randy, but if you even ever wondered why the wording "Mail
> > Relay" exists you might see that if an
> > ISP simply forwards all outgoing tcp port 25 traffic to one of their
> > relays and protects that from weird spam
>
> The point is that 25 is just a number. You'll eventually be blocking
> all numbers sooner or later (and re-inventing dumb terminals).
Another person who can't read.
SMTP is a protocol which is based on relaying messages from one
mailserver to another.
An endnode (especially workstations) don't need to run SMTP.
ISP/Company's already have SMTP servers which are setup to relay for
their clients.
So what's so bad about forwarding all tcp/25 traffic over that relay and
letting that relay decide if the MAIL FROM: is allowed to be relayed?
And if a client wants to mail from another domain which isn't relayed by
it's upstream ISP, he/she could ask it's ISP to do so.
Yes this will add an administrative hassle, but doesn't spam imply that
also?
The whole problem is yet again that a small amount of people (this time
spammers) make a whole lot of problems for a lot of people (we).
Also this setup is somewhat the same as checking from an smtp-server
whether the sending server is also actually running an smtp...
Fortunatly we got SpamAssasin/Razor nowadays so the spam that does get
through gets filtered out without bothering me or anybody else using
these tools.
Greets,
Jeroen
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