On Wednesday 24 February 2010 11:06:46 pm Andrew McNabb wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 09:24:01PM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote:
> > GMail's smtp server is port 587, TLS.  Alberto recently pointed out on
> > a another list that all mail servers should allow their users to use
> > port 587 and TLS to submit mail, and port 25 should be restricted to
> > server-to-server traffic only.
> 
> Server-to-server traffic is really the biggest problem.  As far as I can
> tell, almost all server-to-server traffic is unencrypted.

Current SMTP RFC's state the traffic should be UNencrypted.  However, they 
also allow traffic on port 25 to be encrypted if both sides support it and 
are willing to do it.  There is no authentication, just encryption.  That 
allows traffic between domains to be encrypted.  I really don't know how 
many systems on the Internet actually implement that and use it when 
available.  However, you cannot force TLS over SMTP on port 25.  That is 
forbidden.

-- 
Alberto Treviño
BYU Testing Center
Brigham Young University
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