Heavy Networking 616: Do We Need An SMTP Alternative? TMTP And MNM Are Here To Find Out

What would you say if I suggested that SMTP is broken? You’d say that’s silly. SMTP is working just fine. Not only is it not broken, it’s one of the longest-lived protocols on the Internet. And hey, who hasn’t had fun telnetting to port 25 and typing out SMTP commands by hand to deliver a message back in the day, am I right?!? I don’t mean SMTP is broken at a protocol level. It works…perhaps a little too well. Too well for the modern Internet and the world of spam, phishing, and so on. Let’s face it. Your inbox is a wasteland of despair. What if we could use something other than SMTP to improve the world of email? Liam Breck has had just such a vision, and built some things, namely mnm and the Trusted Message Transport Protocol (TMTP). Liam is a software designer who’s been researching tools and infrastructure for knowledge workers for fifteen years. We discuss: * The huge amount of effort being wasted to address spam, phishing, and other email threats * The architecture of TMTP and mnm and how they work * How messages are created and delivered * New user experiences that can be enabled * Much more Show Links: Trusted Message Transport Protocol (TMTP) – GitHub Why TMTP? mnm Project –  MNMnotmail.org How I volunteered to re-architect Internet email – Changelog @mnmnotmail – Liam on Twitter