>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