On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:44:53PM -0500, David Wright wrote: > I don't need help because the smarthost I've chosen to use does not > insist on this.
Then you're basically an end user, not a mail admin. > When I authenticate, I can send the mail anywhere, but it's tedious to > demonstrate here as I have to dig out my password/encode it in base64 > and all that stuff. I've done it to help others here in the past. You're authenticating because you're an end user who is asking permission to use someone else's mail relay. That relay has to decide who is allowed to use it, and who is not. The way they've chosen to do that is by using password-based authentication. When your smarthost sends your messages to gmail.com's MX, or to hotmail.com's MX, or to lists.debian.org's MX, there is no authentication step. Likewise, if you were to bypass the smarthost and send your own messages directly to lists.debian.org's MX (et al.) there would be no authentication step.
