Outgoing Email Failure May Be For Lack of Authentication

Outgoing email delivery has come under increasing scrutiny as spammers consume grater internet resources. Recently, some of our customers have suddenly found they are unable to deliver email from their workstations. What we first suspected, and found to be correct, was that their Internet Service Provider [ISP] suddenly required authentication without giving them formal notice.

When the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol [SMTP] was developed for sending email more than 20 years ago the widespread commercial and personal use we see today was never anticipated. At the time there apparently didn't seem to be any reason to build a secure signature into the message headers. It does seem odd when one considers the stick security designed into early networking protocols.

Without a method for verifying the source of an email, spammers can hi-jack your email address and send unsolicited mail that appears to come from you. And since most users don't have fixed IP addresses, using this as verification on the desktop isn't at all practical. As such, a method was developed to at least verify the mail server of origin with your ISP using your login codes to verify that you are in fact a customer and are the one sending the email.

To help walk you through setting this up for Outlook Express and Outlook we have crated a Email Authentication Flash Video that will help you set up authentication for these email clients. As mentioned in the video, you may need to get alternate codes from your ISP if you are using your laptop with a connection other than the one you subscribe to through your ISP. Hope this helps! Let us know with a comment.