"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 15, 2026 18:51 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Forwarding services by yodermk
Parent article: A note for MXroute users

Not at all. Email is fantastic and there's nothing else that can do what it does.

I don't see a successor to SMTP coming along any time soon because no proposed successor has managed to have all of the following SMTP features:

No need for a central login or central identity authority.
If you know someone's email address, you can communicate with them with no prior arrangement.
There are multiple independent implementations, including open-source ones.
Communication is non-realtime; if someone's not around when you send an email, they'll see it next time they check.

to post comments

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 15, 2026 22:46 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (47 responses)

I strongly suspect that we are quickly approaching the point where first item would be considered a problem and would be outlawed.

We may miss “good old times” when it was possible to do anything on the Internet “without a central authority”, but I suspect that governments wouldn't tolerate that for a much longer.

Means mail would never get a replacement… and yet it would go the way of dodo, anyway.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 15, 2026 22:55 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (35 responses)

I strongly suspect that we are quickly approaching the point where first item would be considered a problem and would be outlawed.

I don't. While the Internet is enshittifying at a rapid pace, I don't think everyone is willing to be forced to register with a central organization or even a federation of them just to be able to send a quick inquiry to a store (for example).

And of course, federated identity on the scale of the Internet is not really any better than no identity at all, because you quickly run out of the ability to know who to trust as an identity provider and who not.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 10:22 UTC (Fri) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link] (4 responses)

You don't register just to communicate to a specific store, of course. With centralized systems, you register once and are then able to send inquiries to any store. People do exactly that in Facebook, for example, or X.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 11:33 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

And what happens if where you want to go is not federated with facebook? Or (in my case) it's only federated with facebook? (I refuse to touch facebook with a bargepole!)

The choices are basically, either we have NO central authority, or we have ONE central authority and NO CHOICE. Given that the second is (a) a despot's dream, and (b) would almost certainly get shot down in the US at least as a blatant violation of free speech and the right to peaceably assemble, I think that central authority is, basically, completely untenable.

Cheers,
Wol

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:20 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> And what happens if where you want to go is not federated with facebook?

Or worse yet, Facebook decides to arbitrarily yank the credentials you've been using for the past two decades, locking you out of communicating with pretty much everyone and everything?

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:28 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Well… that's the reason to create such a system, isn't it? When you can “cancel” anyone with the flick of the finger… it's much easier to control dissent.

I would say that such danger is not the reason for such a system to not happen, but more of a reason for such system to be enforced.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:49 UTC (Fri) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for centralized services. Perhaps I should have added that disclaimer.

I'm just saying that lots of people will not see the requirement of having to register as significant hindrance. When a large part of one's contacts use some service, one is inclined/pressures into using that same service; and once one is using that service, that threshold of having to register falls away.

I'm not saying that's a good thing. Either everyone uses the same service, which leads to a monopoly, which is not desirable. Or everyone uses different services, but when different people in your group of contacts use different services you're pressured into registering for several of them. Not good either.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:16 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (29 responses)

I don't think everyone is willing to be forced to register with a central organization or even a federation of them just to be able to send a quick inquiry to a store (for example).

Sure. But would that even matter if other ways would be outlawed?

We are moving precisely there… and relatively quickly, at that.

Of course some “darknets” would exist even after governments would make such acts illegal… but the majority of population wouldn't be using them.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:27 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (28 responses)

No, I don't think we're moving to the point where email will be outlawed, at least not in the (so-called) "Free World" of liberal democracies. You are indulging in hyperbole.

Also, when you register for any sort of online account, what is it that you invariably need to provide and also validate? That's right: Your email address. Or in many fewer cases, a cell phone number. Both email and phone numbers allow you to be contacted without any prior setup.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:32 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (27 responses)

> No, I don't think we're moving to the point where email will be outlawed, at least not in the (so-called) "Free World" of liberal democracies.

The “Free World” of liberal democracies is coming to an end. We may argue how exactly would it crumble, there are many possibilities, but what's simply not in the card is its continued existence, medium term.

It would be interesting to see whether what would come in its place would still be called a “democracy” (wouldn't be surprised, really), but the freedoms are increasingly quickly removed, one, by one.

> Both email and phone numbers allow you to be contacted without any prior setup.

Sure. But there are increasing pressure to ensure that phone number is tightly tied to the government-provided ID. But that wouldn't work with e-mail, thus e-mail would be simply outlawed.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:41 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (21 responses)

Again, I think you are engaging in hyperbole. Democracy may well be doomed in the United States, and for sure that will make life very difficult in other democracies, but it's not doomed everywhere.

Recent elections in both Canada and The Netherlands saw voters rejecting the more right-wing and authoritarian parties in favor of middle-of-the-road traditional liberal-democratic parties.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 14:44 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

> Democracy may well be doomed in the United States, and for sure that will make life very difficult in other democracies, but it's not doomed everywhere.

Democracy is extremely wasteful. It may only exist when there are extreme amount of resources to waste. And even with recent abundances western democracies were quickly moving toward insolvency (which most others are not a democracies at all but a fig leaf that hides the real rules).

That means that pretty soon there would be a choice just between two options:

Democracy is abandoned and less wasteful institution would be installed in its place.
There would be an attempt to “save the democracy” which would exhaust the resources and society would collapse, Somalie-style (Afganistan-style, Lybia-style… the differences between these failed societies are vast, true, but “democracy” is not an option in either of these).

E-mail would be outlawed relatively quickly in countries with #1 choice and later in countries with #2 choice (when they would face a collapse of modern infrastructure and would have to trade their e-mail for the permission to join countries that would do #1 choice).

It's not that I to see the failure of democracy and abandonement of e-mail… I don't — but that doesn't matter: what couldn't continue… would stop.

> Recent elections in both Canada and The Netherlands saw voters rejecting the more right-wing and authoritarian parties in favor of middle-of-the-road traditional liberal-democratic parties.

They would go with #2 choice, then and would be robbed and partially occupied by countries that would pick #1 choice. This may lead to drastic differences to lives of average citizen, but that wouldn't save a democracy.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 14:48 UTC (Fri) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

It appears that we have, once again, strayed far from the original topic or one that is on-topic for LWN. Please stop the thread here before we have to put it in moderation or delete additional comments. Thanks!

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 15:39 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (18 responses)

> Recent elections in both Canada and The Netherlands saw voters rejecting the more right-wing and authoritarian parties in favor of middle-of-the-road traditional liberal-democratic parties.

All the major parties, left, right, middle are moving to ever more authoritarian measures and banning anonymity online. Just watch EU Chat Control this year. Ireland is taking its turn at the presidency later this year and the politicians from the 2 major 'middle of the road' parties who form the government are very keen to use that time to push forward registration for Internet access (sorry, "Age verification on social media for the kids - won't/someone/ think of the children!").

Just watch. There are very few truly Liberal politicians around anymore.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 16:03 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (17 responses)

I suspect we're straying far OT, but I don't think proof-of-age requirements for social media are necessarily a bad thing, given how demonstrably harmful social media is. It's no worse than asking for proof-of-age to buy alcohol or cigarettes or to gamble in a casino.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 16:59 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

This is the "is Freedom worth having?" thing - "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose".

And this could well be why America is in such a mess - Freedom - in *practice* - means the rich have the freedom to do whatever they like. The poor (the majority) just suffer in silence.

And this is why khim - much as I hate to agree with him - may well be right that traditional liberal democracy is doomed. Don't forget - it hasn't been around very long! Dunno about other countries, but Britain only gained an *approximation* of democracy when the "Rotten Boroughs" were abolished. ?1850s? Then we had male emancipation - voting was opened to all men over 35 rather than just landowners. Modern democracy only came with the emancipation of women, and the removal of power from the Lords to the Commons, after the first world war.

America loves to say "Government of the people, by the people, for the people", but that only works for the middle class. When jobs were plentiful, and wages were high (the 1850s-ish? the 1950s-ish) it was a boom time for democracy. Now, with wage inequality ever growing, disposable income for most people shrinking, etc etc, democracy is in severe danger.

Although personally the end of democracy is not my worst fear. Given Trump's desire for oil (his attacks on Venezuela and Greenland), and his and America's general disdain for Scientific, Rational thought, I suspect even in our lifetimes we will have much more serious things to think about. Climate change is now unstoppable and running away I think. Agriculture is likely to collapse, leading to global famine. Our NHS is on the verge of collapse, and if the rest of the world is similar we could be heading for a wave of pandemics ...

And the biggest killer likely hiding in the wings? Asthma! The concentration of CO2 has doubled since the start of the industrial revolution. It could easily double again - or more. Will our lungs be able to evolve fast enough?

Sorry for being such a Cassandra ...

Cheers,
Wol

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 17:12 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (15 responses)

I have kids, and the Internet is shaping their lives, and social media is a concern.

Yet, I know these things are not going to help. The "face recognition" stuff is flawed - it has classed my youngest as 2 years older than their 2.5-year-older sibling. So now my youngest is in with teenagers on chats on Roblox. Even if it worked, other kids in their school are just getting older siblings to stand-in.

It's stupidly flawed, in easily anticipated ways. Which I'm sure the legislators knew too. However, it doesn't matter, cause as it fails it just strengthens the case for what they /really/ want - authenticated ID checks for everyone. And that will also need (effectively) mandatory ID cards (which we don't have in Ireland, but which they want - they tried before with public services as the carrot/stick, failed cause of the backlash, and now they're trying to get it done with Internet access as the carrot/stick).

I don't know why authorities have such hard-ons for ID cards and ID checks for everyone. It's a perennial thing. There's a whole "Yes, Minister!" episode on this, and that's from the early 80s! Tony Blair had a hard-on for it (and still does). And if they fail, they come back in X years - but, 1 by 1 in various counties, they succeed.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 17:20 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Oh, the solution for my kids is to educate them. To teach them. To give them the tools to navigate society and the technologies around them, as they inevitably must - cause (much sooner than I'd like) they're going to stop listening to me, they'll be off doing their own thing, and I won't be able to stop them. Indeed, I want to feel I know they're well equipped to handle it.

I know there are parents who can't be arsed to do that. Or who have been frightened into thinking they can't do that. I don't think that's a reason for authoritarian measures though.

The kids are going to work around these things anyway. If we lock down the big-tech social media that are easily controlled by government, they'll eventually find other apps/sites/tools that are out of the governments control (other jurisdictions, or just decentralised). Just like we wrote and read shit on the Internet ourselves, even when it was hard to find.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 17:41 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (13 responses)

Nothing will be 100% effective. I bought alcohol when I was underage. But age checks can greatly reduce the damage done by damaging things like tobacco, alcohol, gambling and social media. We already accept age checks for so many things; why are online dangers somehow special?

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 2:02 UTC (Sat) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (12 responses)

> We already accept age checks for so many things; why are online dangers somehow special?

If I buy beer in my local grocery store I show my ID and that's the end of it.

If I verify my age online the gatekeeper records as much information as they can grab, and links it to as much other information as they can find, and then keeps it forever, and occasionally some hackers drop in and steal a copy.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 2:07 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

There are secure ways to achieve age verification without having a gatekeeper know things about you that it shouldn't. For example, if you have a driver's license, the license issuing authority could provide a service similar to a federated login that doesn't let anyone else know anything other than "the person who's trying to use your service is at least 18 years old."

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 2:52 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (10 responses)

> For example, if you have a driver's license, the license issuing authority could provide a service similar to a federated login that doesn't let anyone else know anything other than "the person who's trying to use your service is at least 18 years old."

Where's the profit/control in that?

(The key word in what you wrote is _could_. Just like we could also have world peace in the coming year...)

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 15:00 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (5 responses)

> Where's the profit/control in that?

Yet that is precisely what is being implemented in the EU.

* The site only gets that you are over 18, but not who you are
* The verifier knows who asked for verification, but doesn't know the site that wants to know.

The whole area of Zero-Knowledges Proofs is a fascinating one. Just because you don't think someone can profit, doesn't mean it won't happen.

And personally, this is all a *vast* improvement over the current process of sending photos your your passport over the ether to god-knows which data store. Why people think the new system could be any worse I don't know.

I look forward to the day I can prove my nationality over the internet without photocopying my passport. Bring it on!

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 15:41 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

There are people talking about ZK proofs for age verification for EU Chat Control. However, none of this is agreed on yet. And we are dealing with a number of governments who are notoriously incompetent at tech. Further, even if it's done via ZK proofs, this still doesn't address the fundamental problem here:

You have no anonymity anymore in online speech. Your identity is verifiably linked to everything.

(Again, the threat model here is state actors and increasing illiberalism - which may one day lead to troubling overreach; indeed, there already are examples of troubling over-reach in previously-liberal democracies where people have been locked out of digital services by government because of political speech).

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 18:43 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> a number of governments who are notoriously incompetent at tech.

Have you seen the actual EU regulations? They are awesome. For example, I suggest checking the repairability regulations. CRA and DMA are also great.

The EU is exceedingly bureaucratic, but it's a very competent bureaucracy.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 19:51 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

The EU is not a monolith, and there are a number of different institutions with differing interests, in different groupings.

I don't know, and I can't find, the history of the CRA and which groups pushed for it - before the European Commission formally introduced it as a proposal (the commission being the one and only body able to do that) - but if it's sensible and pro-consumer, there's a good chance it originated from or at least drew much of its early support from MEPs (prior to formal proposal).

The Chat Control thing is the wet dream of a number of governments and (I assume) their security services. There are regular top-down (i.e., governmental) attempts to push in ID cards and ID checks in various contexts (to *long before* the EU!), and they usually fail because of bottom-up push-back - which MEPs are pretty good at listening to most times. But the securocrats keep pushing for it, keep bringing it back.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 18, 2026 15:37 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't know, and I can't find, the history of the CRA and which groups pushed for it - before the European Commission formally introduced it as a proposal (the commission being the one and only body able to do that) - but if it's sensible and pro-consumer, there's a good chance it originated from or at least drew much of its early support from MEPs (prior to formal proposal).

Well sure. The process of lawmaking prior to the Commission publishing its proposal is nebulous, but there is structure there. The 2020 Cybersecurity strategy [1] already pointed out this was going to happen. The Cybersecurity Act (CSA) in 2019 already established an EU-wide cybersecurity framework focused largely on ICT and hardware products, making it clear that software would eventually be addressed as well.

In 2022 there was a public consultation [2] with 108 responses. And looking through those responses (they are all public), not a single Free Software/Open Source organisation (AFAICT) made a submission. So it's not entirely surprising that initial draft did not have much in that direction (only 3 mention the term "open source"). Free software 5 times, and Linux mentioned not once.

It's good that in the process we could get MEPs on our side to improve the legislation, but we need to get a lot better at adding to the process earlier. Limited early participation leads to limited early consideration.

[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/eus-cybe...
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your...

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 21, 2026 13:07 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

My experience is that MEPs are pretty good at listening. The more authoritarian proposals I know of always originated with governments. My assumptions, maybe biased by my experience, is that:

- The "good" pro-consumer, pro-individual rights stuff tends to have originated from MEPs (and their EP workings groups, via whatever other groups went to the trouble of lobbying them)

- The "bad", authoritarian, illiberal, anti-individual-rights stuff (mandatory IDs, criminal weight behind "DRM" copyright laws, etc.) tends to come from the governments (i.e., the council). Often these are laws they /desired/ previously to implement nationally, but could not get done because of national push-back. So they then go and push it through at a European level, and then later when they have to pass a law (if they even have to do that) to implement the directive they can counter any local opposition with "Oh, but it's not our fault, Europe passed it".

No doubt there are exceptions, but that's the pattern I've noticed, when there's been sufficiently "good" or "bad" European "law" or regulations for me to notice.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 15:21 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

If the government imposes age restrictions, then it has a duty to enable those restrictions in as non-privacy-violating a way as possible.

Just because government in the USA is completely corrupt and dysfunctional, and the entire society thinks only about profit and nothing else, it doesn't mean that's the case everywhere, as kleptog commented.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 15:54 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

> Just because government in the USA is completely corrupt and dysfunctional, and the entire society thinks only about profit and nothing else, it doesn't mean that's the case everywhere,

I have to laugh here at the implication that governments elsewhere (I guess you mean in the EU?) are not corrupt and dysfunctional (under some threshold that means they can deliver stuff sensibly). Especially as I live in Ireland.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 18:58 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> corrupt and dysfunctional

I duuno about Ireland, but over here in the UK I would say our biggest problem isn't government, but an incompetent and biased gutter press.

I think it was today's Daily Mail - full of biased opinion pieces against Labour masquerading as news. I'm not a fan of Starmer - and I'm very much not a Labour person - but given that the guy has spent most of his professional career dealing with lynch mobs I think I trust him to try and do the right thing.

Given that I'm right of centre, why is it that the two politicians I admire most are both Labour? Because I trust them to be honest and to put their people above their politics.

Cheers,
Wol

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 17, 2026 20:02 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

The UK is perhaps less corrupt. However, in some ways, that's because the UK political classes and establishment have over the decades (century+?) constructed a system of the most high-class and sophisticated corruption, where the political classes are still bought off but via unimpeachable means. None of this shabby, direct handing of cash to policians in return for a favour - like in those unsophisticated former colonies. Oh no.. the British have a better class of corruption than that.

Politician makes decisions benefiting a donor. Politician some years later leaves office. Politician - after the requisite 2 years demanded by the ministerial code - becomes a director of the company (or some little subsidiary) of his donor, collecting a nice regular remuneration for what is undoubtedly a most demanding role requiring significant dedication of time! Unimpeachable, all strictly above board, all quite proper. And most definitely not corruption. Yet, the politician did the bidding of the donor and was (in some way, at some time) rewarded for it.

The sophistication of corruption in the British government was explored fairly regularly in "Yes, Minister!" (what /gold/ that series was, and incredible how relevant it still is - should be compulsory viewing) - though can't think of specific examples right now.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 15:34 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

> there are increasing pressure to ensure that phone number is tightly tied to the government-provided ID. But that wouldn't work with e-mail

Hmmm... have you tried obtaining a /truly/ anonymous email address? I.e., one that is not connected to other things that are likely connected to you (e.g., to your common access network, your mobile phone number, an existing 'usable' email address). One that is usable, where the email you send will actually end up in the Inbox of the recipient - bearing in mind that in statistical terms most valid recipients these days have their Inbox hosted by a fairly small number of large tech companies, who generally will hide incoming emails from hosts that allow anonymous registration of email users - if not outright reject them.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 16:01 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes. I self-host my email and other than being tied to me by the domain registration (which is not really tied to my personal ID through anything official), my email addresses are not connected to any other identity.

And I haven't had deliverability issues, including to the big ones like Gmail and Hotmail.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 16:03 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

I bet you have paid for that domain multiple times with a card in your name, and with different cards over time.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 16:11 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, but only the domain registrar or its payment processor knows which card I've used, not some central identity agency.

Obviously, if the government really wanted to find out who was behind my domain, they could find it in 30 seconds. But that's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about an identity authority that can strongly tie a specific email address to a person.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 17:04 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

At least for my purposes in this side-thread, the context is growing authoritarianism in previously-liberal-democracies, and so the (eventual) threat-model I consider - in terms of a threat to society generally in being able to organise itself to resist in the face of some future significant over-reach - is the nation-state and its SIGINT, for a value of SIGINT that acknowledges that many of these previously-liberal-democracies co-operate and share wrt SIGINT. Even if other members did not wish to support a particular member engaged in some over-reach, the sharing of data and of exploits may /already/ have been carried as a routine thing prior to whatever over-reach and civil issues that arise.

You or I may not face any threat today. We don't know about the future. We may not even participate in any wrong-doing/resistance, but some "AI" tool may flag us as suspicious for whatever combination of various innocuous things the "AI" hallucinates as suspicious, leading to some agent then blindly putting the various threads in the data together to figure out that dskoll.ca was paid for by various cards belonging to you and putting further agents on the case to "just doing their job" to haul you in and ransack your house and anything else to look for further evidence.

We're not there yet, but we're sliding towards to it.

Now, the point where we still feel we don't /really/ need anonymity, the point where we can see how "Think of the Children!" is a fair trade-off, the point /before/ the over-reach that leads us to need anonymity, is the point where the authorities remove anonymity from us - quite naturally. And this is the point where we should resist that, even though there are seemingly reasonable "But... the children!" arguments.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 15, 2026 23:11 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> I strongly suspect that we are quickly approaching the point where first item would be considered a problem and would be outlawed.

So when are they going to ban snail mail?

Cheers,
Wol

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:19 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

They wouldn't. They would just make it impossible to use with government-provided ID.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 11:58 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (8 responses)

Governments would like many things. Doesn't mean they can have them.

It is impossible for governments to ban decentralised, anonymous, unstoppable messaging. A number of ways to do it are well described in literature, and with running systems in open Free software. The genie is long, long out of the bottle.

They'd have to shut off the Internet. And even then, so long as people have computers with radios, there will still be decentralised, anonymous (at the logical level - radio transmitters are discoverable at a physical level though) messaging systems.

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:26 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (7 responses)

> It is impossible for governments to ban decentralised, anonymous, unstoppable messaging.

Why not? Just a few signatures and bam: it's illegal. Easy.

What you probably meant: it's impossible to reliably enforce such a ban… and that's true, but it's possible to make it so dangerous to use it that most people wouldn't care… and the only who would care would know they are doing illegal things and can be easily prosecuted.

> And even then, so long as people have computers with radios, there will still be decentralised, anonymous (at the logical level - radio transmitters are discoverable at a physical level though) messaging systems.

As long as that percentage is small enough it's can be controlled by security guys, that's also well-tested ground.

The question is not whether governments would do that but how would they justify that. There are lots of pretexts to do that: child porno, drugs, Putin spies, etc.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:53 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (6 responses)

They can do what they want, de jure, of course. De facto is an entirely different thing. And yes, they'd invoke 1 or more of the four horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse. They're currently playing the "Think of the children!" plank of that in the EU, in order to try make it mandatory for adults to give ID to use the Internet (they'll try do it piece by piece). As ever, they will only succeed for sign-ups to local or else v large tech services (your local ISP/access network; big tech).

I will be teaching my kids how to use decentralised apps, and will show them a few (Session, maybe Snikket - not tried it yet, website makes it sound good) and how to use Tor. And I hope they'll encourage some of their friends too.

They are going to grow up in the most powerful and unbridled panopticon humanity has ever seen, controlled by increasingly authoritarian governments. Liberalism has been attacked and kicked under the carpet by both left and right. They'll need to know the tools to cope with that.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 7:18 UTC (Sun) by nivedita76 (subscriber, #121790) [Link] (5 responses)

I’m not sure de facto is such a different thing. Anonymous messaging works in some places today because you can access platforms provided by companies whose members can’t be coerced by the government. If the US/UK/EU wanted to get rid of anonymous messaging, you have nowhere to hide. The internet backbone is run by companies that can be coerced by those governments.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 15:28 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

If governments wanted to read people's communications, they'd encourage the use of SMTP. Most emails are not end-to-end encrypted, and it's dead easy to intercept emails. You just make email providers give law enforcement a "lawful interception" method.

Back when I was in the email security business, our product had this feature, requested by a number of customers. We also ran a hosted email filtering service and while we ourselves never used the feature and were never asked to use it, it's likely that some of our customers who ran the software on-premises did use the feature.

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Posted Jan 20, 2026 15:49 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

> If the US/UK/EU wanted to get rid of anonymous messaging, you have nowhere to hide. The internet backbone is run by companies that can be coerced by those governments.

This is not true.

You can always layer anonymous communication over the top of completely observed communication. We have robust techniques to accomplish this, robust against all but very focused attacks by very powerful nation-state actors. E.g., we can run onion routing nodes such as Tor, and host services /within/ Tor (so, even crack-downs on Exit nodes would not stop this), and we can run anonymous, distributed messaging protocols over the onion-routed overlay network (e.g., Session as one example).

That can be done robustly enough that it is infeasible for even extremely powerful state attackers to halt within a society - unless they turn off the Internet entirely, but then... packet-radio is now ubiquitous, and basically everyone carries devices in their pocket with 2+ of them. So even if the Internet were turned off, we still can run (logically) anonymous messaging over mesh networks in dense urban areas. Social attacks - i.e., infiltration, informants, etc. - are the only feasible way to really stop this.

So... these laws to stop anonymous messaging are ultimately pointless to some degree. Course, the point is to make anonymous messaging /costly/ - in convenience if nothing else - for most people. If it's niche and inconvenient enough that only nerds use it, that is probably enough so that - if the time ever comes that the need arises - the masses will not know how to use these tools to organise themselves. That is what the authorities are betting on.

What we should be doing, as technologists, is making these tools more convenient for daily use. In some cases, they're already pretty good and it's just a question of making the masses *aware* these tools exist and are useful. E.g., Session is pretty good as a replacement for WhatsApp for p2p messaging - it just needs the network effects. Or perhaps Snikket may be good enough (has groups, which Session doesn't easily have) - not checked it out yet.

Decentralised and near-impossible to stop by malevolent states *is* possible. Just network effects and social mores to get people to care and switch. But perhaps that only happens if events conspire to make it painfully clear to them - hopefully not too late.

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Posted Jan 20, 2026 17:25 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (2 responses)

unless they turn off the Internet entirely

Iran has just done this. Don't underestimate a sufficiently desperate government...

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Posted Jan 21, 2026 13:28 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

As per up-thread, even with Internet shut-off, there's still packet radios in everyone's pocket for short-distance mesh networking, and LoRaWAN is also wide-spread and can't be banned cause it gets some use in industry and agriculture (e.g. for sensors). LWN has had stories before on Free Software systems to setup well-featured messaging systems on those short and mid range packet radio systems.

There is also a massive cost to shutting off the Internet. You can't be a modern country with no Internet. It won't stay shut off for long (as we're seeing in your example).

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Posted Jan 22, 2026 17:42 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Turning off the internet is an option for a western government that doesn't care about the economy anymore.

Honestly, I think we've reached the point where if you completely shutdown the internet in a western country for more than a few days, people start starving. Setting up a mesh network is nowhere near anyone's top priority.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 0:19 UTC (Fri) by xecycle (subscriber, #140261) [Link] (1 responses)

IMHO the DNS is already a central identity authority. One either pay for a domain themselves, or rely on a mail service which pay for that, and cost of that domain must be charged to its users directly or indirectly, in addition to servicing costs.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 0:29 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

DNS identifies a domain, not a specific person. And while it's true that anyone sending from my personal domain is actually me, receiving mail from gmail.com doesn't narrow down who the sender is to any measurable extent.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 8:35 UTC (Fri) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (22 responses)

> If you know someone's email address, you can communicate with them with no prior arrangement.

The real questions is why we would want this in a world that is so clearly full of scams, spam, people using your address because they think it is their own,...

90+% of email use today is mails from some system where you have an account anyway, those don't really need this property.

Of the rest is having to send some sort of separate type of message as your first message like the friends invite in most modern systems really such a big deal?

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 12:19 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (20 responses)

> The real questions is why we would want this in a world that is so clearly full of scams, spam, people using your address because they think it is their own,...

I guess some (most?) folks don't actually value freedom.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:08 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (19 responses)

Freedom is over-rated.

Don't forget "you can pick two. any two". Reality offers us a choice of three. America is so fixated on Freedom, that it forgets the other two, which are Society, and Security/Wealth.

(Society is basically where people look after each other, and Security is where you have enough money or whatever to live comfortably)

I can't remember the details back from when I came across it originally, but is the classic dilemma that choosing one stops you having the other. It's extremely easy to come to the - rational! - conclusion that Freedom isn't worth it, especially when you compare America to other civilised nations and decide that having the majority struggling on the breadline where it's every man for himself just is not where you want to be.

I'm not saying I like that choice, I want all three. But nature says NO!

Cheers,
Wol

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 6:35 UTC (Sun) by elimranianass (subscriber, #164758) [Link] (16 responses)

A majority of people are struggling to survive in America? I visit even the most rural corners there, frequently, since I'm Canadian and in general, people are wealthier and have better services than we do here. So I guess Canada is even worse? Compared to what? Surely not Europe, because just a look at youth unemployment would make that statement rather ironic. I'm not trying to start an argument, it's just that I'm wondering if you have been to America before because your comment is puzzling. The US has tons of problems, but that's just not one of them

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 7:23 UTC (Sun) by nivedita76 (subscriber, #121790) [Link] (1 responses)

I live in America, and every city I’ve lived in has homeless people and beggars, so, yes, there certainly are a number of people struggling to survive.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 7:26 UTC (Sun) by nivedita76 (subscriber, #121790) [Link]

I probably wouldn’t characterize it as the “majority”, that is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s larger than Europe. My understanding, which may be wrong, is that in Europe, being unemployed doesn’t automatically mean you struggle to survive. In the US the unemployed youth without support from parents is probably living on the street and eating at soup kitchens.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 12:17 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (13 responses)

> A majority of people are struggling to survive in America?

Yes. Grocery bills have roughly doubled in the past five or so years. Medical care costs (+insurance premiums) continue to skyrocket. Real estate (==rent) prices are being driven further up by private equity that totally isn't (wink wink) engaging in price fixing. Government assistance programs are being slashed. What jobs there are available are menial and don't pay enough to cover the bills.

source: my own eyes living in a very rural community that gets in excess of two thirds of its revenue from federal funding. we're about to lose our only hospital; local farmers lost their primary export markets; the cost of pretty much everything has gone way up and effective incomes are going down. Naturally this is all the fault of folks with non-white skin. (No, I am not making that last bit up)

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 14:48 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (12 responses)

> Grocery bills have roughly doubled in the past five or so years.

It's a 24% increase. Salaries grown faster than inflation so people's buying power has increased. This has allowed various immoral pundits to trick to the gullible by omitting to mention that when people get richer they shop more at Whole Foods, Gelson's and such.

> Naturally this is all the fault of folks with non-white skin. (No, I am not making that last bit up)

This is the only real motivation, the germans have a saying "Schadenfreude ist die richtige Freude". Current president is doing exactly what he said he would do.

The polls were clear that the actually struggling went for Harris. There just weren't that many of them. Especially since Biden's policies gave the most growth in buying power to the lowest paid...

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 16:02 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> The polls were clear that the actually struggling went for Harris. There just weren't that many of them. Especially since Biden's policies gave the most growth in buying power to the lowest paid...

Are you sure? Of course I don't know America, but a lot of the programs here - *aimed* at changing the tax system to help the lowest paid - (a) forget that the poorest paid don't pay tax, and (b) actually had a much bigger impact for higher rate tax payers.

Your typical younger person over here, if they're on the average salary, is claiming top-up benefits. THAT'S APPALLING. Bear in mind Mr Average earns a lot less than the average salary, so that's potentially about 70% of the population. I didn't include older people (although many of them are in financial difficulty) because a lot of them own their own house outright, so money that the young are spending on rent is for them discretionary income.

And this isn't a party political dig - one of the biggest problems is politicians dancing to the scandal-seeking imagination of incompetent journalists.

Cheers,
Wol

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 17:06 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (1 responses)

> Of course I don't know America, but a lot of the programs here

The countries are very different. The US has grown. The UK has stagnated(not helped by leaving the EU). Biden in particular got some very good policies through, probably because the republicans realized that they can just *say* they are horrible instead of blocking them. And then they get the benefit of a better economy and can continue to make people believe it is bad.

Hmm. I realize that I sound like a madman giving an objective analysis of US politics. Better not talk about them threatening to invade an island because they want to put a radar there, except they've already had multiple radars and military bases there for approx 70 years.

Off-topic

Posted Jan 18, 2026 17:11 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Folks (all of you!), this has gone way off topic for LWN. Please let's end it here.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 22:07 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (8 responses)

> It's a 24% increase. Salaries grown faster than inflation so people's buying power has increased.

Inflation over the past five years is officially 24%. However median wages have only gone up by 21% during that same period. Meanwhile, housing costs have gone up by nearly 50%, and other essentials (eg food, medical, energy) have also gone up faster than the official inflation rate.

Essential costs going up faster than wages yields a *decrease* in buying power.

More tangibly, I spend more today to feed just two people than I did to feed four in 2020 -- and I have the receipts to prove it.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 23:59 UTC (Sun) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (7 responses)

I expect we will get yelled again for being off-topic, so to keep it short. This is the graph of median wages adjusted for inflation:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

The big spike in 2020 is an artifact of the lowest paid workers being fired during the pandemic while the highest paid where kept on the payroll.

Cherry-pickers who want to mislead are having a field day with exploiting this. But in reality the median US worker is better off now than ever before.

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 9:33 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

Just to point out you've failed to address pizza's point.

Absolute wages is irrelevant if you fail to address essential costs. What's happened to *disposable* income after food, housing etc? I'm lucky - I haven't really felt this, but many UK homes are now in "negative budget", as pay rises and inflation are roughly equal, but rent and food costs have been rising at double that. Pizza's figures say the US is in the same mess as the UK.

Cheers,
Wol

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 11:29 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (5 responses)

> Just to point out you've failed to address pizza's point.

No, his point is fully addressed. The graph is adjusted for inflation and represents real buying power.
> Pizza's figures say the US is in the same mess as the UK.

It's not. It's likely that the last US election was even stupider than brexit, but the effects haven't really shown up yet except for some communities that e.g. depended on trade with Canada.

In fact we haven't really seen the effects of brexit itself yet.

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 12:42 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

> No, his point is fully addressed. The graph is adjusted for inflation and represents real buying power.

The reason "grocery prices" haven't gone up in those official stats is that the yardsticks have changed -- You can't just compare prices, oyu have to compare what you *get* for those prices. A salient (and widely reported) example is how the ingredients to prepare a Thanksgiving meal (from walmart) was trumpeted as being "25% cheaper" this year than the last, and could supposedly even feed 10 instead of 8. Except this year's selection included considerably less (in both variety *and* quantity) than last year's, with a higher portion of lower-quality store brands than before. I can provide numerous examples in my pantry right now where the packaging has shrunk while being sold for the "same" price. (Directly in front of me is a juice container that has shrunk from 64oz pre-COVID to 59oz...to now 57. And the "price" has _still_ gone up after adjusted for the official inflation rate. And that's for something produced a few hours' drive from here)

So who do I believe, you or my own lying eyes (and actual receiepts)?

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 13:10 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link] (3 responses)

> The reason "grocery prices" haven't gone up in those official stats is that the yardsticks have change

The official stats are designed to adjust for those effects. The whole point of producing them is to give an objective measure.

> So who do I believe, you or my own lying eyes

You seem a bit confused.

1) I'm not the person producing these stats.
2) You are conflating your own experience with the US as a whole. Even in the best of economies it's normal to have a number of people or whole communities that are struggling.

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 13:45 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> The official stats are designed to adjust for those effects. The whole point of producing them is to give an objective measure.

I agree, they are "supposed to"

But in practice, it's not so perfect. And that's before the current administration fired the head of the bureau of labor statistics for not producing "good" numbers.

> You are conflating your own experience with the US as a whole. Even in the best of economies it's normal to have a number of people or whole communities that are struggling.

I understand all about statistics and [non-uniform] sample distribution. But when I'm in the top 5 percentile for income, living in one of the lower-cost areas of the country, and spending more to feed fewer people (after official inflation rates are factored in) it's hard to see how everyone to the left of my spot on the curve (ie lower income and/or higher relative expenses, ie "worse off") is instead somehow doing better than I am.

(This reminds me of the "sure, we're losing money on every item we sell, but we'll make up for it in volume!" quip)

This thread has outlived its usefulness

Posted Jan 19, 2026 13:47 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Let's, everybody, please wind this up here and any other threads discussing the economy, etc. Thank you.

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Posted Jan 19, 2026 14:09 UTC (Mon) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

Lots of people insist that there's something wrong with official statistics and produce their own, including billionaires who spend plenty of money. Yet all of these have so far been obviously wrong if you poke at it a little. They make the rounds on Twitter a while and are them forgotten.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 7:29 UTC (Sun) by nivedita76 (subscriber, #121790) [Link] (1 responses)

Why is this a dilemma? Europe doesn’t seem particularly “unfree” to me, and whatever “think of the children” regulations might be proposed or passed seem to have more to do with politics and winning elections than being necessary for social cohesion or wealth or security.

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Posted Jan 18, 2026 12:20 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> and whatever “think of the children” regulations might be proposed or passed seem to have more to do with politics and winning elections than being necessary for social cohesion or wealth or security.

They may not be "necessary" but they are still the law of the land and as such are enforced.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:24 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

>>If you know someone's email address, you can communicate with them with no prior arrangement.

> The real questions is why we would want this in a world that is so clearly full of scams, spam, people using your address because they think it is their own,...

Anti-spam software nowadays is pretty good; I rarely get a spam that makes it into my INBOX. So I think most email providers have figured out how to keep it manageable. As to why we want that, there are all kinds of reasons. If I want to send a quick enquiry to an online store, email is the most convenient way. If I want to let people contact me with questions about my open-source software projects, email is the most convenient way.

The phone system and regular mail work the same way. If you know someone's phone number, you can just call them up. You don't need to perform any setup work to be able to do this, and it's very convenient.

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Posted Jan 16, 2026 11:54 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

You're describing something like Signal or (almost) Session (if you think Signal is still too centralised and/or you want it decoupled from phone numbers).

(Signal has forks, that remove all blobs and add security/privacy features; Session isn't mature/big enough yet to have multiple implementations, but is open-source).