> > > It will never happen, but my vote would be that all SMTP servers from now on are shipped with SMTP AUTH enabled by default (using PAM/sasldb on linux, local user account on Win32). The user must climb the admin curve to turn that off rather than having to do some work to switch it on!
>
> > Please NO. I imagine that the majority of users have no use for SMTP AUTH.... I don't even have sasldb installed. My mail servers have the necessary software installed to handle mail.
>
> Well, I know what you mean, but...
>
> I'm guessing that you are a small email server, friends and family? Don't you already need a username password to download email? AUTH'ing to upload mail is just a click box in the majority of email programs, and for (many) email email programs they default to the same username/password as for receiving...

I do run my own mail server at home - as yet my ISP hasn't blocked port 25 and
I hope they don't, because I'm more aggressive with the anti-UCE stuff than I
am at work. If they do block port 25, I'll need to switch my MX records to
relay through work and use a high-numbered port for postfix at home :-)

I work for an ISP and none of my inbound servers use authentication - they are
all merely relays to the final destinations, where port 25 is not visible to
the world......

>
> ...so what's the problem (in a nutshell).
>
> My thinking is that most home/small users will have pop/IMAP via local accounts on a one box solution, so why not put that into place out of the box...? The number of questions on the list about SASL or complicated pop before SMTP when a simple auth setup would be far easier (not to mention the number of people who get something that ought to work, but get blindsided by the chroot setup)

Using POP/IMAP does not, per se, require authentication for postfix.
>
> What would be interesting is a breakdown of open-relay's by country and type of server. BT Openworld have clamped down on their network because of the number of open relays on ADSL lines (also they are a bunch of ****, but that is a different story). My guess is that in Europe/US there are a large number of Exchange CD's walking home from the office and out of the box Exchange talks to the world. As for the rest of the world I guess standard sendmail relay's by default?

Anyone who connects Exchange to the Internet at large gets what they
deserve... Unfortunately so do the rest of us :-(

>
> Anyway, it would be nice to drive up the standard of the out of the box email server. My view is that AUTH costs very little in a LAN environment and is usually REQUIRED in a dialup environment, so pop it in out of the box...

...but, dialup is beginning to lose out to broadband, where authentication is
not required.

Maybe it should be included in Linux packages, but not as part of the postfix
config itself.

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