1 Jul
2004
1 Jul
'04
11:39 a.m.
Hi,
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Patrick Kaell wrote:
They should inform about this kind of measure, of course.
a while back,
we had quite some discussion about blocking of port 25
traffic by ISPs.
If you look at last night's Slashdot article "Comcast Port 25 Blocks
Result In Less Spam", I guess you'll understand better why ISPs do
such a thing - and that it is indeed a good thing (tm).
If the ISP doesn't put this on the homepage and on the FAQ and the
hotline doesn't know anything about it, it is a really bad, bad thing,
believe me! My girlfriend had to send several important mails for
her project this
day. It wasn't fun. At first I thought it was the fault of the mail
provider. If I had been informed by the ISP I could have found an
alternative (perhaps by connecting my old analog modem).
Care to explain just why you didn't follow the only sensible
measure, which is to go through your ISPs mailserver, which
*must* relay for you?
If you're on dialup, there's absolutely no reason to do it
any other way - and if you had a valid reason, wtf are you
doing on a dialup line with no fixed IP?
Also, there's a great many mailservers that are filtering
based on DULs, i.e. if you're on a dialup, there's quite
some chances that your emails won't be accepted at the other
end anyway.
Hmm deja vu somehow - it's a repeat of the discussion we
already had.
[snip]
There is absolutely NO point in protecting this
behavior. Port 25 is
(after port 80) the most important port one needs. Blocking it means to
deliver not the service that I have paid for!
No, you weren't using the service correctly, IMHO. And you haven't
read your ISPs terms of use, probably.
You probably also haven't ever had the "luck" of handling a larger
network's abuse@ account.
Your ISP offers an email service - which goes through it's mailserver.
They deliver - it's not the ISPs problem that you didn't use the
service properly.
I'd also say that they offer due diligence - protecting everybody
else from misconfigured mailservers (open relays), from zombies
(think trojans exploited by spammers) etc. on their network - I
consider that a good thing.
[I'll add a remark that I've encountered quite some admins who
can't properly configure a mailserver - so it's definitely not
something I want to see done and put on the 'net by Mr. anybody,
when I have to bear the consequences of that incompetence.]
The next time you buy a car and the factory has
forgotten to put an
engine in it, I will say that it is a good thing, because an engine
would pollute the environment (a ressource we are more dependend of than
the network!)
Invalid comparison. I'd see it rather as an airbag on the driver's
side which you can't switch off [hint: there's no reason to want an
off switch there, although there are good reasons to have it for
the other seat].
Greets Eric