From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200307090124.h691On724189@augusta.math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] pop3 before smtp
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Jul 2003 03:16:49 +0200."
             <016201c345b7$c60edb60$d2944251@insultant.net>
From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
Date: Tue,  8 Jul 2003 21:24:49 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: ef99b3d0-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> what has it got to do with POP?

Early on in the days of the spam epidemic, as a crude form of
authentication, someone modified sendmail to require a user to
authenticate to their POP server before allowing them to relay mail
through their server.  Basically, the POP server put a timestamp
associated with a user's email address in a file somewhere, and then
the MTA looked in it before relaying mail from that address.  Like most
bad ideas, it stuck.

	- Dan C.