Comcast blocking port 25? (not what you think)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Mon, 10 May 2004, at 11:23am, travis at scootz.net wrote:
>>   Mail abuse.  A great deal of spam and other mail abuse comes from
>> computers on consumer feeds that are incorrectly configured as a mail
>> relay (don't ask me how, but it happens more often then you would think),
>> or have been compromised by some kind of malware and are being used as
>> same.  At the same time, SMTP was designed to move mail between static,
>> well-connected systems.  Hosts on dynamic, consumer feeds do not meet
>> that definition.
> 
> My parents are not running any kind of server.

  You'll notice I never said they were.

  Comcast doesn't (and can't) know you're not using TCP port 25 for mail
abuse, though.  By forcing you to authenticate to their system, and pass
your mail through their system, though, they can monitor things, enforce
limits, add an audit trail to the headers, etc.

> That is exactly what they are trying to do, send the mail to my server so
> I can do the job of dealing with their mail.

  Then you should be using an MSA, not an MTA.  Or at least, that's what
conventional net.wisdom says.  Didn't you get the memo?  :)

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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