>Many weeks ago I asked this list about relaying, what it is, and how to >explain to sites that LISTSERV is not a SPAM system. I got ZERO replies. >I have since figured out, by experimentation, more or less what relaying >is but I don't understand why LISTSERV would be doing it. I'm not a mail expert, but I think I understand what is going on here due to changes made recently by my ISP. As far as I can tell, relaying is when you ask a smart mailhost (aka SMTP server) to send mail to a user who is not on their network. Virtually all ISPs will prohibit this because it allows *anyone* to send mail via their system without having to be a member. My ISP will only allow mail through their smart mailhost (post.demon.co.uk) if it is from a demon subscriber (trapped by IP address, I guess). I cannot explain why LISTSERV should be doing this, unless something is misconfigured. <snip> >requested. It's interesting that it doesn't happen for every message, >so sometimes LISTSERV seems to be doing relaying, and sometimes not. <snip> I don't think it is LISTSERV that is relaying. Say you send a message to [log in to unmask] and you connect to fred.siteB.com and ask it to send your mail to [log in to unmask] . If you are not a customer of siteB.com then you would be "relaying" your message to site A. >Please explain why this happens, how to fix it, and how I can explain to >clueless people that LISTSERV is not SPAM. I don't know if this is a >problem at other sites but it certainly is here. This problem is >increasing every day, so I would expect it would be in LSOFT's best >interest to fix it. I've never seen this on my list, but its one that should be discussed with your listserv postmaster, and/or LSOFT themselves. James -- James Chamier, [log in to unmask], http://www.chamier.demon.co.uk