Tue 8 Mar 2005
This is one of the dumbest responses to spam that I have seen: SBC has begun blocking port 25 for all DSL customers with dynamic IPs. The assumption, I guess, is that this (gigantic) group of people is likely to be using a third party SMTP server to send out SPAM. SBC provides an opt-out feature, but who knows how long that will take. Their grand solutions are basically for you to get your service provider to switch to authenticated e-mail on port 587 or use a VPN. When was the last time any of us had that kind of leverage with our providers? And better yet, why should our providers be forced to switch as a result of SBC's draconian move?
I am as annoyed about spam as the next person, but I just don't think it makes sense to implement these unilateral measures. 99% of the people who now have port 25 blocked are not spammers. There must be a way to identify the 1% who are in order to avoid this hassle for the rest. Sheesh.
Or, I suppose, we could just get on with it on IPv6 and make dynamic IPs a thing of the past.
This has been happening in stages (I imagine) throughout their service area since early February. Unless you hang out on boards like dslreports.com, you'd have no idea about it. Like so many others, I spent days trying to figure out why suddenly I couldn't send email via portigal.com – my address of choice. My ISP tech support suggested that might be the problem, but they didn't have any info "oh yeah, Yahoo just started blocking port 25."
It took me a couple of days to figure out how the heck to reconfigure my email client to make use of their verification, etc. But this was hard, and I'm relatively comfortable with technology. What would a consumer-level email user do? Yahoo didn't give us any warning or any real guidance on how to handle this.
There is a mechanism for opting out; you send a lot of info to Yahoo and eventually they will unblock it for you. I found it back in early February when this was happening, I took a quick look on Google before I started this post and I couldn't find it. Try one of the forums on dslreports.com – the SBCYahoo forum should have something.
That's great. Really. But where the hell's the food and wine? I'm hungry. And not drunk.