Subject: Re: [Asrg] SMTP AUTH

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 17:04:59 +0000 (GMT)

>>> Actually, there are some cases where submission port (587) also cannot
>be used. For example, my personal experience in McDonalds Free WiFi in
>Singapore. I tried using my SMTP AUTH server, but they 'hijack' all
>SMTP related traffic and send it through their own gateway.

> Were you trying port 25 or port 587?  I've occasionally heard of 587
being blocked, but I've never heard of it being spoofed.

Wasn't me, so I can't help you on that one.

>> And, of course, if you're using a public access Internet terminal (at
>a library, airport waiting lounge, most cruise ships, etc), then you
>might have NO choice whatsoever regarding what SMTP server they've
>chosen to route their outgoing mail through,

> I dunno about you, but when I'm using someone else's computer, I use
my web mail.  I've seen public internet terminals in airports that
claim that they'll download your POP mail if you put in your password,
but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that.  It strikes me as a
rare scenario, getting rarer.

Well, if we keep working to make SMTP mail unusable by more people, more people 
might be FORCED into using Web mail, more often.  I don't think that's a very 
bright thing to do, in part because Web mail (just as accessing ANY Web sites) 
comes with its OWN whole new set of risks and dangers (malicious scripting, 
ActiveX, decryption of obscured content, text-as-image, cookies, etc etc), which 
if anything are MORE difficult to deal with and secure than SMTP mail is.

I agree wholeheartedly about Web sites being a concern, and sooner or later we 
will have to address that too, but for the time being we're trying to solve the 
MAIL problem, and for our purposes here I think we need to focus primarily on 
SMTP/POP3 and similar.

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections!  http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:44:22 +0530 (IST)

> if anything are MORE difficult to deal with and secure than SMTP mail is.

Let me refresh ur memory that even MUAs can display HTML and hence we face
more or less the same problem in MUAs too.The idea is to send mail with
authentication and if a secured webmail does that one should prefer that
rather than banging their head against the wall just because we need
SMTP/POP to do the job which is done better by some other thing. We should
remember that our goal is to stop spam by whatever means possible,
protocol is just a medium.