Look out, technical talk and stern glares at Internet noobs incoming!
I’ve had problems sending email the past few days. After some troubleshooting I discovered that my port 25 (default outgoing email) was being blocked by Shaw Cable, my ISP. They’re doing this in an attempt to block virus/trojan generated spam emails. Too many of you people aren’t running good antivirus and insist on opening email attachments that you thought were hot Anna Kournakova pics. Thanks for wrecking the Internet for those of us who know better!
Anyway…
One workaround is to use their server for outgoing email. I’m not going to do that. I have my own server (holycow.com — this blog is hosted on it) that I want all my mail to get routed through, thanks. But I can’t connect to it using port 25 any more. I knew I could use a secure connection but didn’t know the default port offhand, and Outlook certainly wasn’t giving me any pointers.
Well, I’ve figured it out. If you’re running a default Cpanel exim install the default SSL Email port is: 465. To use this in Outlook XP (other versions should be similar):
- Go to Tools > Account Settings, double-click your account
- Click the “More Settings” button
- Click the “Advanced” tab
- Change the “Outgoing server (SMTP):” port from “25″ to “465″
- Change “Use the following type of encrypted connection:” to “SSL” (older versions of Outlook don’t have this — instead they have a “Use encryption” type checkbox, so check it)
That should do it, without having to make any changes on the server side.
And remember, this port block is all your fault, you non-virus-scanner, email-attachment-opening noob, you.
Not me!
…what?
Ahhh yeah I hadn’t noticed this because my email is sent via an SSH tunnel (using Eudora, yeah I know, I’m stubborn).
THANK YOU for posting this. I actually found it using a google search for “shaw blocking email”. Trying to fix this stupid issue has taken me days… Cheers to you! *raises pint*
The problem isn’t user PCs that get hacked. It’s user SERVERS that get hacked. Most mail servers turn relay OFF, so you have to have certain rights to send email through them. A lot of people who are just technical enough to be dangerous install mail servers (its an easy click on a Windows Server install, and Windows Small Business Server has one by default). Once a relay-enabled mail server is on the internet (even if it is behind a firewall or a NAT router) its just a matter of time before one of the black hat botnets finds, infects, and lobotomizes it.
ISPs know when a user’s PC gets hacked. The massive stream of incoming email is easy to detect, and block. What’s dangerous is when a user SERVER gets hacked, because normally, ISPs don’t watch SMTP traffic going out of their networks. With the prevalence of blacklists being used to auto-block known spammers, a rogue user server can get an ISP’s whole IP range blocked, and then it takes hours (and sometimes days) to convince an anti-spam obsessive sysadmin to rescind the block. That can impact thousands of customers, many of whom switch ISPs when they lose email access (even for a short while). So port blocking SMTP is economically the best option for many ISPs, even if it sucks for certain experienced users.
Hacking & botnetting a server should be a capital offense.
Ryan
Well, yes and no. The thing is, many self-replicating email virii these days bring their own SMTP server and start just spamming straight out of the infected person’s system. You don’t even need a regular SMTP server installed to get infected in this fashion because the virus has one.
Mate!
You are the MAN. This has been bugging me for ages.
*raises pint and waves with the other hand simultaneously*
Well Puck,,,, my Google search led me to you,, ha… go Canadians… anyway, I don’t yet know if your advice will help me resolve my Shaw issues,,, or not… but either way, I did at least get to enjoy your “about me” page. Sounds like you are alot like me,,, except techno in other areas…
Thanks,
Dyanna…
Well, I’ve be surfing for a few weeks looking for a way to get the following working. Basically I have ATT as my ISP & yep, they block 25. So here this torn in my side… I have an application that copies items such as voice mail & faxes to my email that does not have the ability to use any kind of security, only the option to change it’s outbound port. I found instructions for setting up the relay via IIS5 (XP Pro) to send out port 465 & authenticate to ATT. @ the good old CMD it looks like it connects & sends as it should but no go. So, I contact the ISP yet again to get the response “we do not support relay”. The 1st item I saw referred to gmails service for this. So I’m trying to find a simple utility or instructions on how to relay my port 25 email via gmail to my standard email. Any ideas?
I think the people to contact about that would be the publisher for your voicemail/fax software.
Thanks for the info.
I’ve spent three days trying to configure my Debian test server to send mail only to find it isn’t my fault!
Perhaps Shaw will unblock the port if I ask nicely.