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Tue Feb 4 15:25:59 UTC 2003

> > It would be nice if we could use SMTP-AUTH on port 25, but the
> > spammers ruined that for us around the same time they ruined courtesy
> > relay.
>
> How did they ruin SMTP Auth? Thanks.

They made it impossible to use port 25 at all, since it's impractical for
ISPs to sniff outgoing traffic to permit SMTP AUTH connections and block
others, and way too much of the other port 25 traffic was
direct-from-dialup spam.

SMTP AUTH works fine on port 587, since there should be no traffic to that
port that isn't authenticated somehow.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web