Jim Ramsay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I'm about to fire of an email to my own ISP saying "AOL did this, so why don't you?".
Because, if I'm not mistaken, you'll only be able to send mail with your ISP email address in the envelope through one of your ISP's SMTP relays.
Or computers your ISP has designated as forwarding hosts. Actually this specification is quite flexible: http://spf.pobox.com/mechanisms.html
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't this screw road-warriors who prefer to receive their email to an address which isn't necessarily affiliated with the ISP they happen to use at the time?
Ah, you mean 'The Traveling Mailman Problem" from http://spf.pobox.com/objections.html. The short answer is:
ISPs can solve the problem by offering SASL. Users can log in to the home mail server even when they're travelling. All modern MUAs support SASL authentication, and all up-to-date ISPs support it on the server end.
I use this myself, using tmda-ofmipd as my SASL SMTP server for outgoing mail from jimramsay.com
If the "ISP of the moment" you're using blocks port 25, there may be trouble, but then ISPs can start offering SASL SMTP on high ports (not very common yet), provide secure webmail (I think most do now), or you can complain to your hotel that you need to get through and they are lame for blocking that port (That's what I'd do, except the front desk might not always know what you mean :)
Theoretically as SPF becomes more prevalent, more people will do these things, which I think would make email usage more secure and accountable anyway, even without SPF. Maybe if more ISPs switched to SASL, less hotels would be leary about letting you go to someone else's mailserver directly.
-- Jim Ramsay
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