Strange thing – my outgoing email up and quit the other day. Since I am a software developer, I ran through all the usual debugging tricks. It looked like my local ISP, Comcast, was somehow blocking my outgoing email traffic! Incoming still worked fine. I used my computer at work to email them and they swore blind that they weren’t blocking my mail. They lied.
It turns out that they are actually and they finally ‘fessed up tonight. In a misguided attempt at blocking spam they have decided to change the standard email port from 25 to port 587. This is the technical equivalent of moving a few doors down the block because you get too many traveling salesmen knocking at your door. The trouble is the salesmen will soon find your new address, and start banging on that one too.
Yes, changing ports will block spam on their system briefly. Just until the virus writers add a few lines of code to get the new Comcast email port number out of your registry and use that instead automatically using port 25. It will be back to business as usual and the spam floodgates will be wide open again. Only the Comcast customers suffer.
I just checked my Windows registry, and low and behold, the email port number is in there half a dozen times. If I were a virus writer (and I am most assuredly not!), it would take about an hour to write some programming code that grabs the non-standard port number and work around Comcast’s idiotic port switcheroo. I can assure you that such a virus development effort is well underway by script kiddies around the planet, even as I type this.
The decision Comcast made to change email ports is just plain stupid on several levels. It will result in a massive tech support headache for them – just about every customer that has their standard email port blocked will be calling them to get their email “turned back on” again. They will have to walk tens of thousands of twit users through the process of reconfiguring their email browser. I wonder how the Comcast stockholders would feel about a poorly informed business decision that will hit their bottom line big time. Tech support is a major expense for an ISP.
Comcast tech support informs me that they are phasing this policy in, system-wide. I just got hit early on. I had a most unpleasant phone conversation with them, and they refused to unblock the port on my cable modem.
The good news: My “home” ISP (yes I have two of them) was sympathetic and offered a solution – they have an alternate email server port open that I can use instead of the blocked port 25. Kudos to Westnet/Silicon Beach out in California for being customer oriented and quick to offer a good solution. Westnet really knows how to run a business, and I have been very happy with their tech support over the years.
My advice is to avoid Comcast as an ISP. If they are dumb enough to make a major change to a basic service like this without informing their victims (oops, I meant customers) then what’s next?
Kevin