On Feb 24, 21:15, Eric Smith wrote:
> Hans wrote:
> > What's proper or not is a matter of opinion, and in my mind
> > open relays are a basic part of the mail system.
>
> Can you cite any legitimate use for a completely open relay? I can't
> think of any. Lacking such examples, I agree with Scott G. Taylor's
> statement:
> > The simple fact-of-the-matter is, open relays are wrong.
My ISP runs two SMTP mail servers, one open, the other not; for a very good
reason. A large number of customers travel across Europe, and it is not
practical for them to always dial the ISP at international rates. Hence,
there are a number of agreements between several ISPs in several European
countries, which allow customers registered with one ISP to use the
points-of-presence of another. However, the roaming user typically wants
to keep his normal email address (ie, have mail appear to originate from
his normal address). To do so, he must either use his "home" server
despite his temporary IP address/hostname not matching that server's domain
(which would look like an attempted forgery to a spam-blocking server) or
must use the "local" server and forge the sender address (which would also
fail on any normal spam-blocking server).
This practice is quite widespread in Europe. Jay's use of MAPS doesn't
bother me, because I can (almost) always use the blocking server, and I
expect that for most roaming users the inconvenience is minimal. However,
until there's a sensible system to deal with roaming users' need to send
mail as well as receive it, there will be open relays.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Received on Mon Feb 28 2000 - 17:44:09 GMT