Anybody else use SBC DSL and unable to send mail?

Supposedly port 25 is now blocked.

[HughMungus]

Anyone hear anything about this? I'm reading on another board that they're not blocking port 25 to prevent people sending all email except your SBC DSL email address (which I never even check anymore due to spam).

[encyclo]

I'm not sure that there is a problem here (note, I don't use this ISP). When sending outgoing mail, you should always be using your ISPs SMTP server anyway (your ISP is supposed to provide you with this service), but your From address can be anything you like. In reality, nothing changes for the end-recipient.

My ISP has always blocked port 25, and I don't even have an email address from them - but I use their SMTP server for sending all my mail.

[HughMungus]

Thanks. It's resolved. ISP started blocking port 25 (meanwhile, my isp email inbox gets so much junk addressed to seemingly everyone at the isp that I don't even check that address anymore; i suspect they sell mailing lists but who knows). I had them manually unblock port 25 for my account.

[sidewinder]

A few big ISP's in Australia have blocked port 25 for a while now.

It means that I can't send any email from my domain, and am forced to use my ISP email account.

If anyone knows a workaround, pls let me know :)

[HughMungus]

Have you tried just asking them to unblock it for your account?

If they hadn't been able to unblock me, I was just going to switch to cable (the same way I saved their $50 moving fee when I threatened to go to cable, haha).

[vrtlw]

Some hosts now allow SMTP on port 26 for this very reason.

Perhaps a word with your hosting provider might yield a solution.

[Corey Bryant]

I have noticed that the ISPs throughout the United States block port 25 in some states while the same ISP in other locations do not.

The problem using your ISP to send the email - some email providers might hold your email to verify that it did come from the correct provider

-Corey

[raywood]

What is the purpose of blocking port 25? I have never even looked at the mailbox provided by my isp.

I always use the smtp servers at my hosting provider. I use different email addresses for each of my sites. I'd be in a heap of trouble if my isp blocked port 25. The CANSPAM Act says we can't spoof our "from" addresses, so I have actual legitimate mailboxes for each of my sites.

[encyclo]

There appears to be some misunderstanding here. On ISP networks which block port 25, that means that you can only use your ISPs SMTP server to send mail. You can't use a locally-based SMTP server (such as on your own computer), nor can you use a remote one. The advantage is that even if the 99% of unpatched Windows PCs on the ISPs network are infected with trojans, they can't be used to send a few billion spam emails because the trojan's internal SMTP server can't make an outbound connection. This is a good thing on domestic networks, but a hassle on business connections.

Since time immemorial on the internet, the convention is to use your ISPs SMTP server for sending mail. You don't need to use a different SMTP server for each account, you don't need to use your hosting company's server, and you're not faking the return address if you do it this way (because it is the valid return address) so CAN-SPAM has nothing to do with it.

There is no relation between a POP3 incoming mail account provided by your ISP and their SMTP server for sending mail. Just because you don't use the former doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't use the latter. In an ideal world, you wouldn't need to block port 25, but in reality, it helps cut down on spam.

[raywood]

Thanks, encyclo. I didn't think about trojans blasting messages from all the infected pc's.

<< Since time immemorial on the internet, the convention is to use your ISPs SMTP server for sending mail. >>

I've been on the internet since before the www, and this is a convention I did not know about.

Anyway if I just use my isp's smtp server and put different return addresses for my domains, the incoming messages to those domains will go to the correct mailbox, and I can still get them off the pop3 server. And that complies with canspam?

Looks like I have a little work to do to configure all the servers in my mail client.