16 Feb
2005
16 Feb
'05
8:11 a.m.
Hi,
On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 08:58:02AM +0100, Patrick Kaell wrote:
There is a Heise article about AOL blocking port 25:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/56418
However AOL does some things differently than Coditel. They are actually
not blocking the port 25 but redirecting all accesses to this port via
destination NAT to their own mail relay which scans all outgoing mails
for spam and worms. This should be transparent for most users.
AFAIK Bluewin (largest swiss ISP) does this too.
But there
are some issues with GMX, which recommends using the alternative port
587, which I also did in my case when Coditel blocked port 25.
The article also says that AOL did prevent most major mail providers
about the introduction of their mail proxy. The article says nothing
whether AOL customers have been informed or not.
IIRC there was an article about this on Slashdot, so I guess yes,
it was communicated.
The thing is becoming moot anyway - the more recent trojans/worms/...
do use the ISP mailserver as configured in the local mail client.
So unless the ISPs cooperate with antispam measures, things look
bad. It's sort of unrealistic to block larger ISPs entirely, even
if they are not being good 'net citizens...
Greetings, Eric