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RE: Stealth Blocking

  • From: Mike Batchelor
  • Date: Wed May 23 20:49:45 2001

> 	Did I say POP-before-SMTP? I don't think I did... SMTP AUTH and TLS
> are two completely setups than POP-before-SMTP and both are
> supported by any
> decent MUA. I agree POP-before-SMTP was not a good plan but it
> worked before
> the SMTP AUTH mechanism came of age. Now there is no logical reason not to
> use it. Or let me guess you don't authenicate your NNTP server either like
> most reputable USENET server admins are doing.
>

Sorry, I just have to respond to this.  If the solution to the open relay
problem is to make all users/customers upgrade their mail software so that
SMTP AUTH can be used instead, then why not extend this idea to its logical
conclusion and stop using IPv4?  Just do it, it's only a software upgrade,
after all, same as upgrading to MUAs that support SMTP AUTH.  IPv6 would
probably help make a bigger dent in the spam problem than MAPS ever will.

It's just a software upgrade, no sweat right?  Yet I know someone is going
to say "but that's different".  I don't think it is, at least not different
in kind.

Lessee... RFC 2487 is SMTP over TLS, dated January 1999, and RFC 2554 is
SMTP AUTH, dated March 1999.  So that's a wholesale upgrade of mail
infrastructure that has been more or less completed (forced?) in just two
years.  IPv6 is described in RFC 1883, dated December 1995.  And here it is,
6 years later...

I think a lot of priorities are bass-ackwards.  Or maybe I'm just naive, and
there's other considerations, other agendas at work that I'm not aware of.

> 	Jeremy T. Bouse
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