One of the great things about the Mac Web is that if you need
information about something related to Apple computers or their use,
you can usually get it quickly.
Last Monday I posted an article, Anti-spam
Measures Marginalize Low-end Macs, explaining how my local ISP is
going to introduce SMTP authentication as an anti-spam measure, but
they were not able to suggest any POP3 email clients that will support
SMTP authentication on 68 K Macs.
Appearances were that subscribers with non-PowerPC Macs would be out
of luck as far as POP email is concerned. I phoned the tech support
desk at the competing ISP in my area and was informed that they had
introduced authentication some time ago. They couldn't suggest any 68K
savvy email software that supports SMTP authentication either.
Of course, in both cases the tech support is essentially Mac
illiterate, and the person at the other end of the line usually has to
refer to a crib sheet in order to discuss Mac issues at all. Happily, I
had much better luck with Low End Mac
readers, several of whom wrote with helpful and informative
suggestions.
On the basis of what I have learned from the reader letters and my
own research, Mulberry appears to
be the all round best bet for 68K Mac users who need an email client
that supports SMTP authentication. Mulberry supports 680x0 processors
and System 7.1, which should cover virtually all Macs still in use.
(More about Mulberry at the end of this
article.)
One of the letters mentioned success using Bare Bones Software's
MailSmith, but MailSmith 1.7, released last week, has dropped support
for 68K Macs.
Another solution for machines that can support Mac OS 8.1 ('040 and
later) is Green, the
nice little freeware email client from France, which also reportedly
supports SMTP authentication. (More about Green at the
end of this article.)
More information on Mulberry and Green appears after the letters
below.
Many thanks to everyone who took the time to write. The information
was very helpful. Where applicable, I have forwarded the information
about authenticating email clients that will work with 68K Macs and
other comments to my ISP, which, at this writing, appears not to have
been implemented the SMTP authentication protocol yet, because Eudora
Light still works. I'll let you know how things turn out.
From Brian and Vickie Wong
From Larry Rosenstein
Subject: Anti-spam Seasures Marginalize Low-end Macs
You didn't mention whether this was a dialup account or not. There's
no technical reason why a dialup user should be required to use SMTP
AUTH, since dialup user would have already been authenticated while
establishing a connection. (I think the same would apply to DSL users
that connect via PPPoE.)
I found that <http://www3.innosoft.com/~chris/smtpauth_client.html>
discusses SMTP AUTH clients and says that Mulberry supports
SMTP AUTH. I didn't try it out, but it appears that the 2.0.8 release
supports 68K Macs and SMTP AUTH.
It would be technically possible to write a relay program that ran
on the Mac. Your preferred email client would send the mail through the
relay program, which would then take care of the SMTP AUTH, but I don't
know of such a program.
Larry Rosenstein
Subject: Email clients for low-end Macs
Mr. Moore,
I read with interest your article "Anti-spam measures marginalize
low-end Macs." I ran into this problem when the ISP I was using was
sold to another ISP. As I was getting addresses and other things
straightened out, I found that I could not send email and eventually
found out that the new ISP was using SMTP authentication to prevent
spamming.
I am on a Centris 610 with 68040
CPU and used Eudora Lite. I, like you, learned that Eudora Lite didn't
support SMTP authentication, and the Eudoras, Netscapes and IEs that
did, did not work on a 68040 with System 7.5.5. I searched around and
found that Mulberry 2.0.8 and MailSmith claimed to support SMTP
authentication. I decided to try Mulberry because it was cheaper and
had a 30 day trial period.
Mulberry does work on my 68040 and does support SMTP authentication.
I am up and running email now. Unfortunately, I find that Mulberry is
not as easy or intuitive to use as Eudora. I not sure how it handles
attachments (when you get an attachment, it tells you - but when you
click on it, it then downloads it/converts it?) I am not a techie, so I
haven't tried to find out if I can import my old Eudora address book,
either. However, it works. I can send and receive email, and I don't
have to change my computer. I would recommend that your low-end Mac
users needing SMTP authentication look into Mulberry.
Brian
From Peter Gøthgen
Subject: SMTP Green
With Green, you're home free. It does support SMTP authentication.
This email is being sent through mac.com using the PPC version of
Green.
Peter Andreas Gøthgen
From: Dave Hamilton - The Mac Observer
Subject: POP/SMTP potential solution
Greetings, Charles -
I read your article today about SMTP authentication. While I don't
know of any 68K email clients that support it, I do know that
even older versions of Eudora use POP's XTND/XMIT commands, which allow
you to send mail through a POP server. Get the "Esoteric Settings" plug
in for Eudora, put it in the plug-ins folder, and you should have an
option to enable XTND/XMIT in one of the new settings panels that the
Esoteric Settings plug-in provides. It should come with Eudora,
typically in the "Extra Plugins" folder.
-Dave
From V Silly
Subject: SMTP Auth :-(
Hi Charles,
I don't have any other programs to suggest but wanted to share my
own experience.
My ISP switched to SMTP auth, and Eudora could no longer send email
even though we were using a version that allowed SMTP auth. We tried
all the versions from 4.3 through most recent, no go.
I have a Web site hosted elsewhere that allows us to use their relay
server for outgoing mail, so I tried that as an alternate solution, but
we were unable to connect to it any longer once our ISP switched to
SMTP auth.
We tried MailSmith, and it worked flawlessly. However there was a
bug in the import filters for address books which made us unable to
import a massive collection of contacts that would have been too much
work to transfer over by hand.
So eventually we ended up switching ISPs.
Which was too bad, since the old one was great, and the new one
constantly disconnects me at any random moment!
This is not on a 68K Mac, so these problems extend to other Mac
users as well.
I'll be interested to read whether you find any solutions.
Best, -V
From: Ben Scent Subject: Re: Anti-spam measures Marginalize Low-end
Macs
Hmm...sounds like you may be out of luck on a 68K Mac if they are
using this authentication method. Open relays - mail servers that do
not do any kind of authentication before passing on your mail - are a
serious boon for spammers. There are other methods of authentication,
however, that won't lock out 68K Mac users or users on other systems
whose clients don't support the latest protocols. Here are some
ways:
- POP before SMTP. In this method, you have to check the POP account
you have with your ISP before you can send mail using their SMTP
server. There is usually a window of 15-30 minutes after checking your
POP account in which you can send mail. If you are always connected to
the Internet and leave your mail client open checking your mail every x
minutes, you won't even have to do anything special when you want to
send mail.
- IP address authentication. Using this method, the SMTP server
checks your IP address before passing along the mail. If the address is
in your ISP's bank of addresses, it passes the mail along. Basically,
this checks that you can only use the ISP's SMTP server when you are
connected to the Internet with their service.
I don't know how much they will heed it - probably not much - but
you may want to suggest one of these methods to your ISP as an
alternative to their current SMTP password authentication scheme.
I hope I was able to be a little bit of a help. Please tell me how
things work out.
Ben
From John Konopka
Subject: SMTP authorization
Dear Charles,
I use AT&T Worldnet based in Japan. Some time ago they initiated
something similar which they call POP before SMTP. In our case they
require that we read mail before sending mail to accomplish the
authorization function. Once authorized we can initiate mail sending
for ten minutes.
This is only required when we are sending mail from outside the ISP.
That is, if we log onto the Internet through AT&T they already know
who I am. If I am on the road outside Japan and get access to the
Internet another way then sending through their server requires
authentication.
This might not be the same, but it is an easy thing to try. By the
way, my wife and I are using Musashi 3.2.4.
Regards, John Konopka
From: Marcel Brown
Subject: SMTP Auth & 68K Macs
I administer a small ISP (FYI, I use Eudora Internet Mail Server on
a Macintosh as our email server). What I have done is enable SMTP Auth
for our users that want to send email from outside our network. For
users that dial up (or our broadband customers that we allocate IPs
to), we do not require SMTP Auth, as we verify via IP address.
Perhaps your ISP could do the same? That way, spammers who try to use
their server as a relay point, could not do so, yet legitimate
customers on their network wouldn't need to use SMTP auth.
Just a thought, Marcel
From Alex Morando
Subject: SMTP authentication and low-end Macs
"Perhaps there is a solution to this problem that I'm not aware of,
and, if so, I'm eager to hear about it, but if my provisional surmise
is correct, this sucks. Another way that the scum-sucking,
bottom-feeding spammers are ruining the Internet for the rest of
us."
I'd agree with the "spammers ruining the Internet" part, but I'd say
that part of the problem is with the ISPs themselves.
They can easily limit access to their SMTP servers to those IP
addresses they control. Then they can easily figure out who spams their
mail servers. As an example, EarthLink will not let you send email if
you are not using one of their IP address blocks. However, in this age
of large ISPs with thousands of new customers per week, this can be a
problem.
Regards, Alex
From: George Mogiljansky
Subject: SMTP authentication, etc.
Hi CW,
The darn thread I lost on Google/Mac - anyways, check out http://www.macemail.com. From there,
check out a suitable search string on google/mac. Truly awesome!
So far, my ISP (sympatico) only recently declared "you must use your
Sympatico email address if using smtp#.sympatico.ca server." I dunno,
but SMTP authentication probably affects Windoze more than 68K - so
again the proverbial shaft. Anyways, there's a few more email clients
at macemail to check out. I'll keep an eye out.
No free ISPs either, eh? Even the Canadian taxpayer-subsidized 3Web
(no Mac support) is fini, hah!
George (Montreal)
From Etienne Michaud
Subject SMTP authentication
Hi,
I've read you piece about your ISP forcing SMTP authentication to
prevent spam.
IMHO, this is a way more sensible solution than blocking access to
the SMTP to the ISP's address block (what my ISP does) as it allows you
to access their SMTP servers using a computer at work, for example. On
a philosophical point of view, I totally support SMTP authentication.
It's a smart solution to spamming, and I would support any ISP that
implements this instead of other weird anti-spam mechanism.
That said, it sucks if you have a 68K machine. The easy solution
would be to use an internal SMTP server (that supports SMTP auth) on
your LAN to relay all your mail to your ISPs mail server. I think the
free Stalker Internet Mail
Server (SIMS) allows you to do this nicely. There are a few
tutorials about it in LEM.
If SIMS does not do authentication, which is not quite clear from
their Web page, I know there are a few BSD distributions available for
low-end Macs that could run one of the gazilions mail packages
available for those OSes that could do SMTP relaying in a pinch. But
then you need a LAN.
Good luck. Etienne Michaud
From Kenneth Winstead
Subject: SMTP Authentication
I've used Eudora 5.x for a while now on my 8100/110.
I've checked the box for SMTP authentication and tried the various
authentication configurations in Eudora, but I have never been able to
send SMTP/POP mail through mac.com or yahoo.com.
With mac.com I just get a bounce message that advises me to "try
authentication."
Good luck.
Mulberry v2.1b1
Mulberry uses the IMAP (IMAP4rev1, IMAP4, and IMAP2bis) protocol for
accessing mail messages on a server, the standard SMTP protocol for
sending messages, and does lots and lots of things with MIME parts for
mixed text and "attachments" of many different types of files and data.
Mulberry Version 2.0 introduced support for POP3 and Local accounts,
full disconnected IMAP support, PGP, SSL and much more.
Mulberry is also one of the handful of Mac email clients that still
supports 68K Macs and Mac OS versions as old as System 7.1, and one of
even fewer that support SMTP authentication/authorization for those
machines.
Two Mac Email Clients That (Reportedly) Support 68K and SMTP
Authentication
The Mulberry v2.1b1 release is now available for testing. This
version also includes a Mac OS X 'native' version for early adopters of
Apple's new OS. Mulberry 2.0.8 is the current final release.
System requirements:
- Any 68K or PowerPC Macintosh (PowerPC-accelerated), or compatible
emulation environment
- 2500K available RAM (4 megabytes total system memory for 68K and 8
megabytes for PowerPC recommended)
- 5.3 megabytes of disk space (full install) 3.8 megabytes (minimal
install)
- TCP/IP under Open Transport 1.1.1or later or MacTCP 2.04 or 2.06
(Open Transport is recommended)
- System 7.1 or later recommended
- NB The Mac OS installer now works natively on Mac OS X (as well as
Mac OS classic) and will automatically install the Mac OS X version of
Mulberry as required.
For more information, visit <http://www.cyrusoft.com/mulberry/mulbinfo.html>.
Green 1.0b12
Green is a freeware email client from France that
- Allows you to create contacts, which make sending mail to frequent
correspondents or groups of people easy, (although it only supports
groups of up to six names)
- Lets you create hierarchical mailboxes to easily organize your
mail
- Allows you to import mailboxes from Outlook Express (pre 5.0
versions), Netscape, and Eudora
- Allows you to define mail rules that will automatically reply to
incoming mails, print a paper copy of a mail, or forward the mail to
someone else, and even start an AppleScript, all at the same time
- Allows you to share one machine with other people without each
person needing a private copy of the program. Each person can define a
personal mail environment, and password protect it against unwanted
access from others
Green comes with a comprehensive online and integrated help system,
making it easy to get any information on how to use Green or eMail in
general.
Green is Appearance savvy, and one of the smallest (and hence fast)
Mac email clients at the same time, and is freeware for personal
use
System requirements:
- Any Macintosh with System 8.1 or more recent.
- QuickTime needs to be installed if you want to view and hear
enclosures inside mail windows.
For more information, visit <http://www.eware.fr/dev/index.html>.
