Comcast Gets Tough on Spam 405
WeakGeek writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, has started blocking port 25 to reduce Spam. Jeanne Russo said Comcast is not blocking port 25 for all its users because it does not want to remove the option for legitimate customers who process their own e-mail. So the company is monitoring traffic and picking out machines that look suspicious. By blocking port 25, they say they cut Spam by 20% last week." ZDnet has another article, with a nice statistic: Comcast generates 800 million email messages/day, but only about 100 million of those are sent through Comcast's SMTP servers.
Question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Question... (Score:5, Informative)
Just monitor traffic coming into and out of your computer. There are utilities that will let you do that. If you see stuff coming and going that you aren't generating then something is definitely wrong.
Re:Question... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Question... (Score:3, Informative)
1. If you are using an ethernet connection (either to a router or straight to a modem) then you will have a 100mbit link. 30kbyte/sec uplink (because thats what we are looking at) will be less than 1% of utilization which is hard to see at least.
2. Modem lights only work if you are straight wired but even if you are it's hard to spot it against a background of random network activity that windows gives you.
what about mistakes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a place to appeal?...as good as this could be, I think it's going to inconvenience a lot of people.
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway I installed MRTG and did the math [google.com] after I got the abuse letter and now I just watch to make sure I haven't downloaded more than about 250kbps averaged over the month (I'm at 181kbps right now) and bingo, problem is solved and I haven't got another abuse letter. Personally I find that to be a pretty pathetic amount of transfer per month but they have a monopoly on broadband here unless you are willing to count satellite as an option, which given the latency, I am not.
Regardless, I'm sure calling technical support will actually be useful in the case where you're not sending spam. However, I have a feeling that they're actually scanning your outgoing messages for particular content. This is not particularly hard to do, and since it's done by an automated system it's not a breach of privacy unless they're holding logging information which contain parts of your emails longer than necessary.
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Needless to say, I'm on cable
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:4, Informative)
90gig/month is gonna be around 3gig/day.
What does your average user need with 3 gigs/day? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does your average user need with 3 gigs/da (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure Slashdot has put more than 3gigs load on some of the websites it has linked to. Many are hosted out of somebody's basement. (Ok, so that is a one-day load.)
Do you really have to be a business to need to send stuff to other people?
Re:What does your average user need with 3 gigs/da (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What does your average user need with 3 gigs/da (Score:4, Interesting)
Gaming server
IRC server
multiple VNC server
Internet radio
PHPnuke boards
Popular Blog
Popular Webcomic comic
Not so popular flavor of Linux you made yourself
Internet phone
Being a camgirl
Seriously, is your imagination so limited that you can't think of another way you use up a lot of uploading bandwidth legally?
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:2)
Also, 3G a day is a lot of downloading. I'm going to conjecture that people who download that much are probably pirating something, so I can see why Comcast and their friends at the MPAA/RIAA/BSA would want them to cap bandwidth.
Anyway, people at my school say
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:2)
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a good one to ask AOL..
They've been blocking virtually anyone sending lots of mail towards them. You have to sign up for their feedback loop, then for their whitelist. In our case, we send a lot of mail to users, because they write to us asking questions. There's plenty of mail going back and forth, but none of it is spam. Most are written by humans, some are automated (You just completed this function, your tracking number is....). They've been doing hit and miss blocking just because they can. It's really annoying. They blocked my workstation because I sent out 4 messages to AOL users in the same day. {sigh}. For my workstation, it's not a big thing, I just changed the IP. But, it's more of a pain for servers.
It doesn't make a lot of sense. I've known spammers. They'll get multiple lines from multiple providers, and keep switching IP's and networks to keep from being blocked. It's all a big act just to make it look like they're being all progressive, even though they're really just annoying legitimate people. Kinda like the TSA.
One of our clients, with his own server and a completely opt in mailing list (like, you specifically have to ask to be on the list) was blocked. He spent hours on the phone with AOL, and got me in on a conference call with them. The support people I spoke with were completely dense. We gave up on any political approach, and just moved his mail server off to another network. He only has about 2000 people who receive his newsletter, and the people not getting it on AOL were actually complaining that they weren't getting them.
Hopefully Comcast will be more professional about it. I know Roadrunner (now Bright House Networks) were absolute dicks about it. They once disconnected my service because I had a DNS server running. I tried to explain to them that their DNS servers sucked (about 5 to 10 seconds to resolve any name). Instead of fixing their problem, they were busy blocking users. {sigh}
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL's blocking is utterly stupid (Score:3, Informative)
AOL user has a button in their email "this is spam" or "I don't want this" or somesuch.
When they hit the button, the message and headers are sent to some server.
The server automatically blocks the IP of the SMTP server that sent the message so it can no longer send email to AOL.
This works in theory, execpt many users treat this button as a way to muffle their annoying friends. So a "forwarded joke" can get flagged as spam even if it is from their cousin on a small local ISP. There
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:3, Insightful)
The management of it would be the same. AOL put a policy into place that is obnoxious, and expect people to jump through hoops to do perfectly legitimate things. Their solution is slow and backwards.
If Comcast is responible about it, cool. I'd be happy to see more people taking his kind of aggressive stance, if they're responsible about it.
After dealing with several different cablemodem companies, I'd be willing to bet it to get the access turned back on would take an hour on hold just to get
Re:what about mistakes? (Score:3, Interesting)
As we come up with newer ways to block spammers, they will undoubtedly come up with more brilliant spelling errors and other methods to bypass blocks.
The time has come for real legislation to make this a crime, punishable by the law. Maybe some of it will stop from legal imprecations... My idea would be some sort of bounty hunting system... A system in which the government would set rewards for geeks who locate and inform the government of spamming distributors.
And
E-mail Advertising? (Score:5, Funny)
"Wow! I think I'll find out more about this Viiagraa! Thanks hf387hfjsd73@hotmail.com!"
education is the solution (Score:4, Funny)
tell your small dicked friends!
Re:E-mail Advertising? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:E-mail Advertising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hehe.
I know you're being funny here, but I think there is a general misconception that the people recieving spam actually have to buy stuff. The spammers are paid to get the messages out to x number of people. Their success is not dependent on the actual return rate on the advertising money. It will, however, affect reoccurring business.
To put it another way, I doubt that lack of customers will make the spam go away. I mean, geez, there are still N-Gage commercials on TV.
Re:E-mail Advertising? (Score:3, Interesting)
That number of people is probably much less than 1% of the recipients, but they are probably people that don't want to discuss their inadequacies face to face with other people. It is also these people that won't report a fraud to the police because they are too embarased to say what they tried to buy and too embarased to say they've been swindled.
Here's why (Score:3, Interesting)
The fax address could also be faked.
At 20 million addresses, that makes my eyeballs worth
I am insulted!
(some stuff deleted to avoid lameness filter)
EMAIL BLAST CAMPAIGNS
ARE YOU TOO BUSY TO SEND OUT YOUR EMAILS YOURSELF?
WHY NOT LET US DO IT FOR YOU?
HOW MANY WOULD YOU LIKE US TO BROADCAST FOR YOU?
PLEASE CHOOSE FORM THE FOLLOWING:
[ ] 5 Million ADDRESSES $400.00
[ ] 10 Million ADDRESSES $600.00
[ ] 20 Million ADDRESSES $1,000.00
[ ] 30 Million ADDRESSES
Re:E-mail Advertising? (Score:3, Funny)
You think that's bad, the Sci-Fi channel is now advertising "Enzyte - Natural Male Enhancement" tablets. So not only do I have to suffer through penis enlargement messages on my computer, but I have to see it during commercial breaks while watching my favorite Sliders episodes. Somebody should tell the (female) exec who runs that channel that penis enlargement pills don't work.
Re:E-mail Advertising? (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like you just blew it! HAHA! Now the money is ALL MINE!
Oh wait! Damn....
Seems reasonable, as long as... (Score:5, Informative)
What I find more chilling is the number of people in the article who are recommending general blocking of the smtp port. Just because it makes life easier for large corporations is no excuse for using a blunt instrument where an elegant solution could be found - in this case, I think the dynamic monitoring and blocking is far more preferable. If NTL decide to block port 25, I guess I'll just have to tunnel outgoing port-25 traffic over a different (say: 2525
Aside: The phrase 'Microsoft is working with
Simon
Re:Seems reasonable, as long as... (Score:3, Informative)
The secondary SMTP port is 587.
Re:Seems reasonable, as long as... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seems reasonable, as long as... (Score:3, Interesting)
It works really well, and I've never heard any complaints about it. It's a lot easier for them than doing things like traffic monitoring etc. as well.
Fine by me (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, if comcast would sell me a static IP address, I might care, but since they don't it's clearly not meant for servers. As long as I can come up with a way to get my mail out (presumably you could set up sendmail or another MTA to use smtp.comcast.net as a relay even though you need to authenticate to use it, but I've never looked into it) it doesn't seem like an issue to me.
Re:Fine by me (Score:3, Informative)
Pssst: it's called "dynamic DNS."
Re:Fine by me (Score:2)
Re:Fine by me (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you use their server from a cafe? You should use the cafe's ISP's smtp server.
Every time this issue comes up, I just get depressed. People range from being upset about having to use the smtp server they agreed to use when they signed up for their account, they work fine, there is no reason a home user paying $39/mo should have the "right" to run smtp of t
Re:Fine by me (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny you should mention this. I worked at Speakeasy for 2 years as an SA. The topic came up several times, it was not laughed at, but considered something that they will eventually be fo
Why not work with the blacklists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not work with the blacklists? (Score:2)
Reverse That (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reverse That (Score:2)
Re:Reverse That (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reverse That (Score:3, Interesting)
Or better yet, make them pay for the opening the port. Then it would be both a revenue generator and an indirect way of making heavy users of upload bandwidth pay for their share.
Re:Reverse That (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the best move an ISP can make. As a rule they shouldnt block anything, but if a machine is suspected of being a spam shooter, they should step in and take care of it for the sake of their network and the internet community.
Also, the second smartest move is to ask people if they ever bought anything from a spammer and if they say yes just punch them in the f
Re:Reverse That (Score:2)
The days when only geeks had high speed intern
Re:Reverse That (Score:3, Interesting)
For the most part I'd agree, except that many large ISP's are notorious for making it virtually impossible to get a service back after they've blocked it.
My ISP here has been pretty good about working with me on any technical issues that have come up, which has been rather refreshing compared to the useless "support" from Rogers or AT&T. There is a great deal to be said for smaller vendors who still understand service, even if it costs a bit more.
Thanks Comcast (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only did they take effors to reduce spam, but for once, they actually listened to their own customers. Thanks Comcast.
All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:5, Interesting)
On a side note, people with virus infected machines will now notice they can't send email to their external SMTP servers, and call Comcast, which they will reply that you have a mass mailing internet worm, and you've been spamming thousands of messages a day. Due to your incompetence, we have turned off your external access, forever.
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:2, Interesting)
They just make up those numbers to sell a product and/or service.
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:2)
98% of all statistics are made up, inluding this one.
For some reason, people like to see "hard" figures, even if someone did just yank it out of their ass.
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:2, Funny)
Sure. Just hand over the exact physical address where all these dickhead spammers are, along with admissable evidence of their illegal and disruptive activities, to the appropriate local authorities for arrest. While you're waiting for the warrants to issue you might consider finding ways to make bulk unsolicited emailing unprofitable. My guess is you'll have enough time to create and impleme
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that'll never happen.
All things considered, spam isn't the only problem out there. The ratio of junk to legitimate mail is about the same in my postal mailbox. I may get one letter or bill in, and the rest is junk.. Why aren't people screaming "We need to make laws.." "they need to be in jail.." etc, etc.. That won't happen because the post office turns a profit on it.
Most US bandwidth providers do a pretty decent job of trying to stop spam. Most have pretty strict standards, and will shut off a line for spam. I've been in on several of those actions, although not against me or my networks. It would be nice if all providers did that, but again, it probably won't happen. Many overseas companies make good money selling overpriced bandwidth to spammers. Think of it in business terms. If you're a [insert country here] provider, you can charge double or more for hosting and bandwidth to a spammer. You don't really have to answer to anyone but yourself, why not take the sale? Big spammers can use up some pretty substantial bandwidth, so it's worth it for them to sell to this customer. If I have the choice of barely paying my bills, or buying a new house and cars this year, I think the choice is obvious.
One of the magic questions is, who do you go after? Just a couple days ago, a site hosted on a network belonging to a friend of mine was the "source" of spam. I know they didn't do it, it had absolutely no relationship to them or what they did. So I got on the machines, and found the source. They had a feedback program that was fairly well written, but someone exploited a bug in it, to send out to a few thousand people before I stopped it. Should they throw this perfectly legitimate businessman in jail because someone managed to exploit something. I had to look at it a few times to figure out how they exploited it, the script was fairly well written.
Since plenty of the spam relates back to overseas sources, you'll never see them spending time in a US jail. Simply enough, you'd never see every government in the world agreeing on enforcement of any law, even an anti-spam law. In a lot of countries, it's rather difficult to even report the spam. What happens when you're trying to report it, and the support people don't speak English. And don't be so egotistical to say "they should all speak English", the universe or even the Internet doesn't revolve around America.
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:3)
Re:All in the name of stopping spammers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we could redirect some of that money to pensions and retraining for current poverty industry employees, and spend what's left (easily the majority) on the space program or education or so
Seems the right way to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice to see a large soulless corporation not just shaft its customers wholesale.
Re:Seems the right way to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
This story is interesting timing for me. Today (as in like an hour ago) I had cable modem service from Comcast installed. "Large soul-less corporation" was the last thing on my mind. Not only were they pleasant on the phone when I called yesterday, but they also provided next day service *and* called when they got there so I could drive on over. (I'm staying at a friend's house until the stuff gets moved over.) Previous
We'll see how effective this is (Score:5, Insightful)
We can watch to see how effective this is by seeing how many of comcast's IPs show up in real time spam blocklists. Take CBL [abuseat.org] and WPBL [pc9.org] for instance, two of my favourite lists...
% grepcidr -c -e 68.80.0.0/13 1501
% grepcidr -c -e 68.80.0.0/13 351
Now we see if those numbers go down over time
Re:We'll see how effective this is (Score:4, Interesting)
CBL: 19897 (2% of entire list)
WPBL: 5199 (10% of entire list!)
Wow, that does look like comcast is responsible for a ton of the world's spam!
Static IPs only and NAT (Score:2)
Now, if people run servers, then let them sign up for a Static IP option. They pay $2 or $5/mo for an extra static IP, direct access to the internet. Then if there is spam from their IPs, their static IP gets disconnected and they would have to p
Getting close to the solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Largest in the nation? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh.. your nation.. not my nation?
Sorry, I forgot there was no other part of the world.
Re:Largest in the nation? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Washington Post is reporting that Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, has started blocking port 25 to reduce Spam.
Re:Largest in the nation? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you just forgot where Slashdot was located.
If I'm reading a British website and they say "the nation," it doesn't take a rocket scientist to infer GB.
Re:Largest in the nation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nor is it slashdot.us
I do not have an ass [cambridge.org] from which to take my head out of, I am sure that would be in breach of some law though, at least in the UK, perhaps it is common practice in the US - I can only hope not.
Here is what I paste into spam complaints. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hi, I received this spam from out of your network. I trust sending spam is in violation of your terms and conditions.
Please take appropriate measures.
I read recently that about 80% of spam is sent via hacked computers on broadband: http://www.sandvine.com/news/pr_detail.asp?ID=50
You might consider closing port 25 per default and only open it for customers who explicitly want to run their own mail servers.
Thanks,
Just use SpamCop (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here is what I paste into spam complaints. (Score:2)
The headers on this UCE show that it came from your service. Please deal with it:
Followed by the complete message with all headers. Short, simple, polite and to the point.
Bellsouth, on the other hand blocks all 25 (Score:5, Informative)
I had a mail server running on static IP for over a year and they've just blocked it as of last night- Their third tier support claimed that it was because they were being threatened with being blocked by other ISPs.
Re:Bellsouth, on the other hand blocks all 25 (Score:2)
Re:Bellsouth, on the other hand blocks all 25 (Score:2, Interesting)
Comcast is clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
They're talking out of their asses. I have manually blacklisted their entire cablemodem space quite some time ago. Running a grep on the mail log files shows that this week I've already rejected approximately 20% more spam from Comcast than last week.
And the week ain't over yet. The log files rotate on Sundays.
I have concluded that Comcast is a lost cause. Damaged goods. The best thing to do is to blacklist their whole stinking sewer pit
... they're not the only ones (Score:4, Informative)
It's crap (Score:2)
And I say they're full of dog turds.
Any spammer with half a clue will just move to a different port system. I bet the IT managers can work the numbers so that if one of the flatulates loudly they can reduce spam by 20%.
Re:It's crap (Score:3, Insightful)
When sending to SMTP you only have 25, 587, and sometimes 2525. (and some others)
So if I want to spam your company. I would have to connect to your company's smtp service. Most likely its running on port 25. Thus if 25 is filtered for me, I'm screwed.
Mostly, everything but 25 requires authentication and even if this cuts a few percentage points of spam thats (in real life) millions of stopped spam.
Fighting spam
I'm a comcast user.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not pass through their mail servers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not pass through their mail servers? (Score:5, Informative)
Now, in my case, none of this applies, because I have a clueful ISP (Hi, Speakeasy!) [speakeasy.net], but back in the Dark Ages of DSL through $TELCO, believe me, I had to. Or I didn't get mail. And believe me, I live for my mail.
Re:Why not pass through their mail servers? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not pass through their mail servers? (Score:2)
I feel that avoiding your ISP's mailservers because you want to eliminate hops (why? does it matter?) is somewhat contrary, and unnecessarily so. Unless their s
Re:Why not pass through their mail servers? (Score:3, Informative)
I used to believe that restricting outgoing port 25 might limit the ammount of spam. Now I am not sure. I suspect that it is reasonably easy for spamware to find a user's SMTP server credentials and use the ISP's SMTP server. There is probably an easy to use API to send mail through Outlook (and the ISP
Well, what I'd like to know (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, isn't that what GMail is doing but to ADD a small advert, and everyone goes bonkers..
Comcast does it to 'stop spam' and they're a hero...?
As a Comcast User... (Score:5, Insightful)
With wonderful dynamic DNS services like no-ip.org I am able to do this on any dynamic IP and I have no reason to worry about needing one of those pesky static IP addresses.
Hopefully if something were to happen where I'd start getting blocked I could just use my connections at work and contact their e-mail admins directly to resolve the issue. However this slash and burn tactic is just the wrong way to go about fighting spam. Hence one of the reasons I left Earthlink/Mindspring, who block e-mail from ALL Dynamic IP addresses and also block outbound port 25 on their networks.
Re:As a Comcast User... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that this is about average, it would only take 46666.67 customers using non-comcast servers to reach this number.
The following is only antidotal, but...
I have set up the cable modems of at least 18 friends and family members. In general I have found that parents tend to use work email addresses most, AOL accouts second most, Hotmail/other free providers, and comcast addresses least. Kids tend to use either AOL or a free email provider more often than using a comcast address.
Thats comes to about 8 comcast addresses that are actualy used out of the 50 or so email accounts used by these friends and family.
I am suprised the number is not much higher.
Re:Lets see... (Score:4, Funny)
The following is only antidotal, but...
(cough) that's Anectdotal.
Unless you think your following statement is countering some effect of a poison... wait, maybe it is. Er, carry on
Bellsouth Block (Score:2, Informative)
There is no need to receive mail from dynamic IPs (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally ... now for all the other ISPs (Score:5, Interesting)
I generally don't like the idea of ISP's interfering with the network, but port 25 is the exception. I like the idea of them blocking 25 by default, but this plan of keeping an eye on their customers is the next best thing. Most people don't realize how much spam comes from broadband accounts. There is some legitimate mail, yes, but those people need to find a new way of life, because it's mostly spam. I use Sendmail at work, and realizing how things have changed on the spam front I updated my /etc/mail/access file so it now starts like this:
And it goes on, and on, and on, for well over a thousand lines. After implementing this I did some calculation and determined that I was blocking about 22% of our incoming mail. There have been some hiccups, but in general I'm really glad I did this. A few people have contacted me to complain that they can't send mail to my users, and I usually tell them to get a static IP address for their mail server or send through a designated relay. This inconvenience to cheap-o owners of SMTP servers with DHCP-assigned addresses has been a real shame, but my users have commented on how much less spam theiy've been getting recently. Blocking broadband users and using Spamcop have been a great combination. Perhaps one day if more ISPs follow Comcast we'll be able to trust those domains again.
I hope so, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope so. Before Cox blocked port 25, I started getting more and more bounces but Exim was still more reliable than Cox's SMTP server. Not being able to run a real mail server bothered me, but having to point my MTA at Cox's SMTP servers has been a real pain.
This inconvenience to cheap-o owners of SMTP servers with DHCP-assigned addresses has been a real shame ...
Do me a favor and tell Cox to get rid of their expe
Wait, comcast lets you run servers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Curses, curses and more curses (Score:4, Interesting)
1) What if I want to create a mailing list for a project that I (hypothetically) am making and host the e-mail server myself?
2) I have absolutely no idea what their virus filter du jour is. Nor do I have any influence on it. If it nukes a ZIP file that I was trying to send (or hoping to receive) then it's just bad luck I guess.
3) The performerance of smtp.mail.dk has been known to be abysmal at times... I wouldn't call it smart to force all e-mail to go through your server if it couldn't even handle the load when only some percentage of what your customers sent went through it earlier...
And I have to deal with this crud because some morons don't belong on the internet, aren't using a firewall and get infected with every single fscking e-mail "virus" [*] that is sent their way.
Not to mention how frustrating it was when my e-mail suddenly one day just stopped working.
[*]: Trojan of course. But noone ever seems to use the right terminology.
Re:Curses, curses and more curses (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you try to get TDC to make an exception for you? Some ISPs actually go out of their way to please their customers. They might customize their filters to let your SMTP traffic thru. Seeing how you are the exception, rather than the rule (not many people with PPP/ADSL run their own servers), this is not unreasonable. Heck, they might even give you a separate network and set up reverse DNS for you (your SMTP server should have it).
Does your TOS have enything to say about this? If your TOS say that you can't run a server (and given the nature of the internet and specially p2p traffic this might be semantic hair splitting), then you'll have to acomodate them. Maybe change to a service that will let you.
Of course, I know by personal experience that telco's (specially if they are the dominant one) can be pretty unreasonable, but you won't know until you try.
Thanks to Spamhaus, Spamcop, Njabl RBLs (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell no!
The only reason they got off their asses is because admins started wholesale blacklisting of their IP space and their customers started complaining.
Blacklisting WORKS! It's the only way to force these ISPs to be responsible.
If you're running content-based filtering, you're part of the problem. If you refuse SMTP traffic from confirmed spam sites, you are part of the solution.
Road Runner and Others have blocked 25 for awhile. (Score:4, Interesting)
The solution was to open up another port for SMTP access on our server.
This happened years ago, I never thought twice about it.
And while we're on the subject of Comcast email... (Score:4, Interesting)
Has anyone noticed that email which passes through Comcast's servers is delayed for an amazing amount of time? I had a customer that I consult for miss deadlines (and consequently sales) because of mail that was sent at 0800 and got recieved at 2200 the next day. I'm not exaggerating.
Hearing this and playing around with it a bit, it became obvious that the mail was simply lounging around on Comcast's servers.
Now, of course, I can talk to their tech support until I'm blue in the face and ask them what's going on, but I'd like to take this chance to appeal to the Slashdot community, who usually have a much better understanding of these matters than the droids at the Comcast call center.
If you do a couple quick searches around dslreports and newsgroups and so on, you'll see that there are in fact many people who have the precise same issue, and have recieved no significant reply.
Are there any Comcast insiders who know why these emails float around in limbo for 24 hour periods?
SPF Records? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the servers that I administer is on Comcast. I just set up SPF records for that domain, and I "include comcast.net" because we send most of our stuff through their SMTP server. Now if only Comcast would set up their SPF records, we could comply to this lovely standard.
Sorry to take this opportunity to rant about one of my pet peeves...
You can thank spam-viruses (Score:4, Interesting)