[Info-vax] Are MX records mandatory to send mail from VMS to an SMTP server?

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <joaibr$are$1 at news.belwue.de>,
gartmann at nonsense.immunbio.mpg.de (Christoph Gartmann) writes: 

> >The question is: Is it possible to separate send and receive? I mean,
> >be allowed to send mail from the box to an smtp server on the Internet
> >and configure nothing to be able to receive mail?
> 
> In principle yes, it is. You may use whatever SMTP address you want to send
> e-mail to a remote SMTP host. But in times of spamming and fraud receiving
> hosts do things like
> - check, whether the connecting host has a DNS entry
> - check, whether the DNS entry corresponds to the envelope FROM header
> - check, wehther the connecting host is authorized to send e-mail from
>   the sending domain
> ....
> 
> Thus, there may be some caveats.

Right.  All the more reason to send through a trusted public SMTP 
server.  I highly recommend http://www.dynaccess.com/ (.de if you 
understand German).  I use them for dynamic-DNS support and find them 
much better than other, more famous providers of such services.  It is 
also possible to use their SMTP relay server, i.e. put this in the 
"alternate gateway" in the SMTP configuration.  If one wants to receive 
email, they also have backup-MX servers and it is possible to have spam 
screening their (but not mandatory; one can take it all and deal with it 
oneself).

In practice, many recipients have a black list and a white list of SMTP
servers they will accept email from.  Many blocks of "dial-up" IP
addresses are on the black list.  Basically, accept email from the white
list and not from the black list.  The people on the white list have an
interest in not sending spam and one can trust email from such addresses
to be spam free or, at least, for them to act quickly if they receive a
complaint.  There are legitimate reasons for "spoofing" the From:
header, having several domains on one IP address etc and in practice I
have not had a problem with any of these, so I don't think many people 
check those.