[olug] Cox and port 25

[William E. Kempf]

OLUG said:
> Now I could be in the minority of people who actually do care about what
>  others think about my email and thus I run postfix and a spam scanner
> and  virus scanner on all incoming AND OUTGOING mail.  This helps cut
> down on a  lot of problems I have seen.  Additionally I only allow
> authenticated SMTP  (in this case a pop [or imap] before smtp solutions
> for postfix).  With all  of these measures I have stayed off of every
> black list I have checked and  very rarely do I get spam delivered to me
> or virus (which of course doesn't  really matter since I use Linux but
> hey).  I have personally not had this  port 25 issue yet, but if I do
> you better believe I will complain up a storm  till they change the
> policy.

I still think the policy sucks.  At best, it's a band aid meant for a
small cut on the finger (Cox _trying_ to cover their own self legally)
trying to stop the blood gushing from a 6" knife wound to the gut (the
actual spam source).  Port blocking isn't going to slow spammers down.  As
pointed out for the "solution" to our legitimate problems, the spammers
can simply use port forwarding and other such hacks to continue.  And that
assumes that all ISPs do the same port blocking, otherwise, they'll just
use some other ISP (which Cox may think is a good thing, but doesn't mean
a hill of beans to me, the customer).  PORT BLOCKING IS NOT A SOLUTION. 
It's not even really a useful stop gap.  You want to stop spam, we either
need laws (and some way to enforce them), or a new protocol.

That said, Nate, you can continue to use Postfix as you do.  I have other
reasons for doing this than just those you listed (I'd be interested in
hearing how you scan for viruses in both incoming and outgoing), so I
_need_ Postfix to work as well (regardless of the contract violations this
means!).  And (assuming this goes through, where some other tests have),
I've gotten Postfix to work nicely by using Cox as a relay.  This was the
document that got me there:
http://mail-abuse.org/dul/gateways.htm#postfix.

-- 
William E. Kempf