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Re: question regarding sendmail



On Mon, Jun 18, 2001, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote about "question regarding sendmail":
> It has been decided here that the company will allow home user to send their 
> emails through the corporate mail server. 
> 
> Naturally - I didn't want to open a relay, so someone suggested that I setup 
> the sendmail to ask for user/pass for smtp operations...
> 
> I can't find docs about this feature on sendmail. I can allow relay to IP's 
> etc - but since I don't know the IP's (manager touring in the world and 
> connecting) - it's a problem

The newest releases of sendmail (see sendmail.org) support a new feature
called "SMTP AUTH" (see RFC 2554, and
http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/auth.html), in which the client authenticates
itself before sending mail.

However, I'm not sure how easy to it is to configure common mail client
clients (especially Windows ones) to use this new feature (the aforementioned
URL talks a bit about this issue). SMTP AUTH is a very new feature, and I
have never personally used it (or have seen anyone else using it).

But there's another, more common, method called "pop before smtp": in this
method the pop3 and smtp servers are somehow connected: a user needs to first
log on to pop3 (he or she has a username and password for that). The IP the
users connects from is logged, and any SMTP sending in (say) the next hour
from this IP address is accepted. This setup is usually transparent to
non-expert users, who use graphical email clients which always try to fetch
new mail before sending new one.
I don't know how to enable pop-before-smtp on sendmail (it obviously also
requires a bit of cooperation from the pop3 or imap server) - maybe somebody
else on the list knows. A simple google search for "pop before smtp" generated
a few results which seem useful, such as http://spam.abuse.net/tools/smPbS.html
and http://people.oven.com/bet/pop-before-smtp/

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Monday, Jun 18 2001, 27 Sivan 5761
nyh@math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |it kills all its students.

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