New Statesman on broadband infections; and getting bitten by the port 25 bug
As should become clear after reading my article for New Statesman on how vulnerable British broadband users are, there’s a certain irony in the fact that I got bitten by the port 25 bug while in Australia.
To be precise, I had wireless access, but couldn’t use my local Postfix (the free program on the Mac that sends mail directly, without you needing to connect to your home network) because Telstra blocks port 25 to stop spam (outgoing email - SMTP - is sent on port 25. Incoming email is port 110; web stuff happens on port 80.)
Telstra’s done this because it’s had so much trouble with virus-infected systems generating spam. But that’s caused problems for some people with perfectly legitimate reasons for sending directly over port 25 to servers that aren’t mail.bigpond.com. There are arguments both ways.
Happily Google’s Gmail and Apple’s Mac.com let you have POP3 access (ie you can use a mail program on your computer to read the webmail stuff) and send from that same program because you have to go through their servers, but can do that from anywhere, over port 587. But they also force you to use their suffix, which meant for the past week or so I couldn’t send any mail “from” charlesarthur.com. Oh well.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Dialup is a pain (5 July 2006; score: 50.14%)
- I'm not being rude, I just can't send email. And enjoying the weather. (22 August 2005; score: 45.93%)
- Underpromise and overdeliver: thanks, Freedom2Surf (8 July 2006; score: 44.17%)
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August 27th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Charles
I use a service called port995.com for my email. You can host a domain there, and have as many mailboxes as you want - you pay by how much storage you want. The mail is also virus-checked (a sophos setup etc). As I check my mail frequently I only pay about £1.50 a month for this which seems good value. Like .mac and google, mail can be sent securely from anywhere, so you can get to use your domain address. there is also webmail of course for those times you need it (or you can forward mail when you’re away to google or apple or whatever to keep from exceeding your basic space allowance).
I suspect there are other services out there (I’ve heard of 1and1, but not experienced it) that do the same.
Ian
August 28th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Gmail lets you set the from field now.
(Lord, it’s hard to get a message thorugh your filter - this is the third go!)