Re: Apparently the practice was prevalent

[Martin Mačok <martin.macok () underground cz>]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 11:23:55AM -0000, John.Airey () rnib org uk wrote:

> Regardless of what you think of these 'ancient' RFCs, you must bear
> in mind that an even more 'ancient' RFC determines the format of the
> email you are reading, RFC 822. It's worth pointing out that anyone
> who does not have an "open" email relay is in breach of this RFC

Not true.

(Anyway, RFC 822 defines ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES and has not
anything to do with mail relaying. This is defined in RFC 821 SIMPLE
MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOL. Both 821 and 822 RFC's were updated with 2821
and 2822 respectively.)

RFC 2821     Simple Mail Transfer Protocol     April 2001

3.7 Relaying

[..]

   A relay SMTP server is usually the target of a DNS MX record that
   designates it, rather than the final delivery system.  The relay
   server may accept or reject the task of relaying the mail in the same
   way it accepts or rejects mail for a local user.  If it accepts the
   task, it then becomes an SMTP client, establishes a transmission
   channel to the next SMTP server specified in the DNS (according to
   the rules in section 5), and sends it the mail.  If it declines to
   relay mail to a particular address for policy reasons, a 550 response
   SHOULD be returned.

[..]

In no way it tells that you have to accept and deliver every message,
i.e. to have "open email relay".

Martin Maèok

P.S. Thank you all for your vacation and out of office autoreplies.
Have a good holiday! I'm very sorry I can't answer to all of you
personally.

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