BellSouth Filtering Port 25
Bellsouth.net is now filtering port 25 requests coming from its own customers. Our account was switched over to filtering in the last two or three days. What is extraordinary about this is BellSouth’s claim that this is really going to help stop spamming:
In an effort to help protect customers against unwanted junk e-mail (spam), BellSouth instituted
a new policy called “Port 25 filtering.” Port 25 filtering should benefit customers by reducing spam; however, a small number of customers may need to change their e-mail settings.
What is curious is how this is really supposed to stop spam. Essentially, the only thing it accomplishes is preventing spam creators (who happen to be BellSouth customers) from using email servers outside of BellSouth’s control. In reality, it ought to be the other way around, BellSouth ought to just be preventing non-BellSouth customers from using the BellSouth servers from sending email (which I am sure they already do to some degree). In the process, they end up preventing me from sending email via any other method other than through their server. Luckily, I can make it look like my email came from the outside email address so there is no end result difference, but what a hassle! I have spent three days trying to figure out why my vanity domain email SMTP server won’t work. And apparently, this port 25 filtering is becoming more and more common among ISP’s.