I haven't repeatedly (or at all) defamed anyone.
You have repeatedly made public statements about what I don't know, what experience I lack, etc. I have questioned the facts you report, but have not made any public claims that you lack sufficient background to know what you are talking about. I honestly don't know much about your background and experience, and have not claimed otherwise. You have made repeated claims about mine that are not based on any knowledge of my actual experience and which several readers of this list know enough to refute, at least in particular areas.
... And I also would like to initiate a formal complaint.
Oh, goodie. In the interesting of getting resolution, and to preserve everyone's sanity in the interim, I'm going to make no further postings on these threads until Harald, or someone else, indicate how he (or they) intend to sort this out.
You haven't answered the question. The answer you gave was irrelevant to the question, and doesn't support your wrong assertion that open relays allow one to send anonymous email without the IP address of the sender.
What I told you, at some length if I recall, in a private note, is that
* Only the IP address recorded in a Received field by the SMTP server that last accepts the message for delivery to you can generally be considered reliable and trustworthy. Reliance on any other IP address in the Received chain requires a chain of trust between SMTP servers. Independent of its utility, several of the discussions on this list in the last few days have ultimately been about establishing such chains of trust, but nothing in either SMTP or generally-accepted Internet operational procedures require or provide it today. Even for the delivery MTA, the trust and/or contractual relationship between the recipient and the operator may not guarantee the integrity of the Received fields it inserts, although they are usually accurate.
* Received fields --other than, again, the one that you own server inserts-- are routinely faked in some varieties of spam. Consequently, the source MTA can often not be identified with any reliability if more than one relay (open or otherwise) is involved.
* While it is not easy when a multiple-transaction TCP-based protocol like SMTP is involved, IP addresses can be faked.
* Obtaining the IP address of a client does not permit identifying a specific user, unless the owner/provider of that IP address retains sufficient information to identify the user and makes that information available upon request. There is no present operational or legal requirement on SMTP server operators, or on ISPs, to log that information at all, nor to retain the information for any particular length of time if they do log it. So, even if the source IP address is known and authentic, the originating user may not be identifiable. That is a fairly good approximation to "anonymous" in my book, but perhaps you are using a different definition.
I think that I am the one being defamed, since you repeated question my credibility while avoiding the question.
You should answer the question, and quit complaining that you are being put in the spot to answer it.
See above, assuming that was the question -- I have had trouble identifying it in the noise.
As indicated above, I'm now out of this discussion until our respective complaints can be evaluated. I encourage you to do likewise.
john
