What client do you use that doesn't support SSL?
Eudora on OSX 10.1
various palm clients
Eudora on OSX 10.2 has been flakey in the extreme when I tried it, however I think that may have been the remote end as well. The debugging info it provided was less than useful. It was not worth spending time on it when my ssh tunnels just work, though that is not an option for everyone.
For me, ssh is fine. I use it all the time. In many ways it is simpler since I only have to authenticate my ssh session and that then works for all the tunnels too.
But the problem is only partly a technical one. Yes, there are many ways to do strong authentication and encryption over the link so that the users are guaranteed privacy for the POP3/IMAP4/SMTP session(s) and you (Ms. ISP) know who is submitting that email. The only slight technical problem for authentication is doing authentication from an administrative domain not under your control, probably using proxy RADIUS or the like.
Even so that does not really solve the problem of the spammer who is willing to pay for an account just to get the authenticated SMTP access. I can authenticate until I am blue in the face and that doesn't change the fact that the spammer has a legitimate account and is still a spammer. Sure I will find out about it shortly thereafter and nuke the account but then Ms. spammer then signs up again with another user ID, credit card, etc. At least with 802.11* I can keep track of the MAC address and raise a red flag if that MAC address shows up again. But all of this is an after-the-fact solution. I would love to find a good way to keep the spammer from sending that first spamail.
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Brian Lloyd 6501 Red Hook Plaza, Suite 201 [EMAIL PROTECTED] St. Thomas, VI 00802 +1.340.998.9447 - voice +1.360.838.9669 - fax GMT-4
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