Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:
On Sat, 24 Oct 2015 12:12:34 PM Brian May wrote:
I think you might be confused, I wasn't talking about contacting the destination SMTP server directly, I was talking about contacting a remote authenticated queuing SMTP server directly.
Why not run a local queuing SMTP server?
On a laptop computer? Doesn't make a lot of sense. It won't keep retrying to send the message while the laptop is disconnected from the Internet or suspended.
Like it or not it is common practise to do this directly from the MUA. This offers advantages such as being able to enter the remote SMTP password when sending the email instead of saving it on disk (not that many people do this...)
Why would anyone want to do that? Anyone who can read the file on disk probably has access to exploit you in so many other ways that they are going to get the password anyway.
Say if your laptop computer was lost or stolen. If you don't have your SMTP/IMAP password stored on your filesystem, then there is no way they can access future emails or send emails via your MTA. Maybe they can't even access your old emails either, that depends on if the emails are downloaded or cached. (even worse if you use the same password for more then just email services - e.g. if it is a Google account) Of course, if your computer was stolen, *and* you get it back again, that is a different matter. -- Brian May <brian@linuxpenguins.xyz> https://linuxpenguins.xyz/brian/