Phorm and Cookies

[Roland Perry]

In article <Pine.SOC.4.64.0804041027520.22293@spruce.eng.gla.ac.uk>, 
Chris Edwards <chris@eng.gla.ac.uk> writes
>On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>| That's only because Outlook (in common with most other such applications) is
>| designed that way - which means that you send just one communication to the
>| ISP's server, which does all the exploding into multiple destinations, MX
>| record looking up for you, the queuing/retrying when the destination is
>| unreachable, returning bounce messages and so on [all of which is quite handy
>| if you are on an occasionally connected, or bandwidth restricted, 
>connection].
>| But the port number's the same.
>
>The port number for client submission was the same, at least in the 1990s.

I know that progress happens, but it can also be overstated. My email 
client is over ten years old, and even four years old in its current 
version. I'll be sending by port 25 for a long time yet.

>Now it's changing (normally to 587), with authentication + hopefully TLS.
>This facilitates separation of client submission traffic from MTA->MTA traffic.
>
>This isn't particularly new, but is most recently documented in RFC 5068.
>
>Folk still submitting on port 25 will be at the mercy of port 25 blocks
>and/or transparent proxies on port 25, the latter breaking SSL (ha - a
>crypto point;-).

I suspect that upgrading to ipv6 will be the only excuse I'll have to 
revisit the software I use.

>| ISPs are doing this as an anti-Spam measure I suppose. Life gets more
>| difficult all the time.
>
>Not necessarily.  From the users' point of view I'd suggest things are
>getter better!  Previously many folk had to reconfigure their outlook
>settings according to where they plug in.  Now, the same settings work
>reliably and securely from anywhere.
>
>(OK, you could always work from anywhere via webmail or VPN.  Now you can
>simply with outlook).

I use a VPN, but that's talking to some software which uses port 25 
onwards from there...
-- 
Roland Perry