[IP] more on Comcast blocking personal mail servers
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: April 9, 2006 4:33:25 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "'Robert Alberti'" <alberti@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] Comcast blocking personal mail servers
This is the opposite -- it's not blocking service to port 25; it's
blocking
mail from dynamic IP addresses just like AOL's policy. Sure it's
terrible
and all that but I finally gave up and now relay my mail through a third
party. DynDNS, TZO and others offer both outbound and inbound relaying.
I object to the notion that we must have an ISP -- it's part of the
assumption that the Internet is just another broadband channel. But at
least I can bypass this particular outrage.
Politically as much as I complain you may find many users thanking their
ISPs for this favor since they fear spam far more than they care
about that
dangerous free speech - whatever that is.
I prefer to attack their defining premises and work around these
problems
(though making noise). It's a matter of tactics vs strategy
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 16:23
To: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [IP] Comcast blocking personal mail servers
Begin forwarded message:
From: Robert Alberti <alberti@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: April 9, 2006 2:44:38 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Comcast blocking personal mail servers
Reply-To: alberti@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For IP if you deem appropriate...
I run my own mail and web server, and over the last few weeks I have
begun receiving messages such as this one following an e-mail to my
birthmother...
550 Comcast does not support the direct connection to its mail
servers from residential IPs. Your mail should be sent to
comcast.net
users through your ISP. Please contact your ISP or mail
administrator
for more information.
I am quite annoyed by this message. On the one hand, I understand a
desire to limit spam. On the other hand, I doubt this will be
particularly effective or that it is justified.
If I were a Comcast customer I could protest this move by canceling my
service. But I am not a Comcast customer: why should I be subject to
their foolish rules and what recourse have I? My birthmother IS a
Comcast customer: is she being served by this policy? I checked
Comcast's website, and while it mentions a 48-hour anti-spam blocking
policy, there is no mention of this more permanent policy.
It seems if I want to communicate with Comcast and other ISPs with this
policy, I must reconfigure my mail server to send through my local ISP
server. This adds another point of failure into the process of sending
and receiving e-mail. And it offers an additional point of exposure for
my e-mail (and please don't talk to me about e-mail encryption until you
produce for me a product that can be remotely supported from a thousand
miles away).
Finally, what right does this company have to inhibit my communications?
Would I be pleased to find that the phone company had determined that a
lot of prank calls came from pay phones, and tried to "help" me by
preventing pay phones from calling my home? I don't think so.
If I wish to contact my birthmother I must either use another address
(such as a Yahoo or Hotmail address, where as we all know no spam
originates), or waste my time reconfiguring my mail server to relay
through my ISP. And for what good?
--
Robert Alberti, CISSP, ISSMP <alberti@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sanction, Inc. Phone: (612) 486-5000 x211
PO Box 583453 Fax: (612) 486-5000
Mpls, MN 55458-3453 http://www.sanction.net
"So you've backed up your data... Have you ever tested recovering it?"
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