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

Posted Jan 16, 2026 13:27 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: "SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services) by khim
Parent article: A note for MXroute users

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.

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"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.