Cox Cable Internet Blocks All SMTP Traffic

[kt]

Originally posted by: BDawg

Originally posted by: Placer14
BWahahaha......Cox just signed their death certificate.

Wanna hazard a guess on what percentage of Cox users use something other than their cox e-mail address? I bet it's a pretty low percentage.

Not sure about that. I've never used any of my ISP provided email address. A lot of people I know don't either.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Cox Cable Internet's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) says that it is for entertainment purposes only. If you bitch about your business not being able to function because your "entertainment only" ISP starts pulling bullsh|t, get a REAL ISP and stfu.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: BillGates

Originally posted by: jw791
WTF? Do you have a link! I have Cox and now my mail is on webmail but I can't get it from Outlook!

What the HELL!????

Just use Cox's outgoing mail server address for the outgoing mail server for all of your mail accounts. They're preventing mail relaying. You will not have any problems if you do what I noted above.

That's the same way that Juno used to work... way back when they were free and not-so-craptastic.

 

[Linux23]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Cox Cable Internet's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) says that it is for entertainment purposes only. If you bitch about your business not being able to function because your "entertainment only" ISP starts pulling bullsh|t, get a REAL ISP and stfu.

I can't believe i'm agreeing with him, but I Agree with him.:Q

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: Linux23

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Cox Cable Internet's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) says that it is for entertainment purposes only. If you bitch about your business not being able to function because your "entertainment only" ISP starts pulling bullsh|t, get a REAL ISP and stfu.

I can't believe i'm agreeing with him, but I Agree with him.:Q

 

[Beattie]

umm, this is pretty typical. Most SMTP servers are set up to only accept mail from hosts on the same domain as them.

Ooh, and you can make it so that it sends email on the cox SMTP server, but make it use a different email address. you can send on mail.cox.net from someone@somewhere.com for example.

 

[Grminalac]

Well you can sometimes use your ISPs SMTP server for other email accounts if you select my outgoing server requires authentication and type in your user name and password.

 

[Nohr]

I use Cox Express (cox-internet.com), here's the email I received from them on June 4th. Guess they handle things a bit differently then cox.net.



Dear Valued Customer,

Effective July 14, 2003, Cox Communications will begin filtering inbound
traffic on ports 25 and 80 via cable modem connections. This will reduce
the spread of viruses like Code Red, Nimda, and other viruses spread through
Email.

Filtering these ports will provide additional protection and improve
performance for your Internet connection.

This will not affect your ability to Send/Receive Email or access the
Internet.

This change only affects customers running an Email or Web Server, which is
a very small percentage of customers.

If you are unsure whether you host an Email or Web Server, please refer to
the following link for more information:

http://www.cox-internet.com/portblocking/

Customers running Email or Web Servers, please contact Cox Communications at
866-229-8770 during the following hours:
Monday through Friday 8 am - 8 pm, Saturday 9 am - 6 pm.

 

[BDawg]

Originally posted by: Nohr
Customers running Email or Web Servers, please contact Cox Communications at
866-229-8770 during the following hours:
Monday through Friday 8 am - 8 pm, Saturday 9 am - 6 pm.

Is that like when the police send people who they have a warrant on the "You've won a free boat, come to this address to collect your prize" type of things?

 

[Descartes]

Are you sure they're not just blocking *inbound* SMTP traffic? I can still use the SMTP server of another account without issue.

 

[DanFungus]

Originally posted by: Cat13
I have cox and I have no problems sending or receiving email from my domain through outlook.

mine works fine here too. Weeee

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Cox Cable Internet's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) says that it is for entertainment purposes only. If you bitch about your business not being able to function because your "entertainment only" ISP starts pulling bullsh|t, get a REAL ISP and stfu.

Define entertainment.

 

[Adul]

I rather not use their craptacular email server.

 

[Nitemare]

Why not just cancell the accounts of spammers then blacklisting them?

 

[yellowperil]

Hmm, I have Cocks Express and have been sending my school account e-mail through Cocks in the past couple days.

I think Cox has a few SMTP servers. I noticed a while back that one of them wasn't working so I switched and haven't had any problems.

Are you using the ones here?

 

[Jzero]

This is a common, industry-standard "best practice."
No admin worth his salt allows SMTP relaying. If you have a whatever.net e-mail address, send it through whatever.net's SMTP server.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: fjorner
Noticed three days ago that I couldn't send email through my accounts hosted elsewhere.

Cox Communications has decided to block ALL SMTP traffic on their servers except for their own. So unless I go through webmail, the only email address I can send mail through at home is my @cox.net address.

They say it was a security issue. That their servers were getting blackballed because of spam.

It's called "blacklisted", and it's a serious problem, especially when companies are trying to do business.

LIVE WITH IT. All the major ISP's have that problem. They handle it other ways, like investing in anti-spam detection systems.

Anti-spam is either very expensive or very unreliable. You end up losing legitimate emails anyway. It's easier just to shut off open-relay.

Furious beyond belief right now.

Cox online tech support tool> I think I have a solution. You can still use the reply-to address in outlook to send mail and they'd reply to your other address.


well, that doesn't help when I run a small business out of my house and have several email addresses I need to send from, now does it?

Flames... flames coming out of the side of my head...

Oh! I get you now. At first I thought they did the same thing my cable provider did, but it sounds like the opposite. My provider configured their system awhile back so I could only send emails with my cable account while I was on the cable - it's to stop people from hijacking accounts and using it to spam with their servers. In your scenario, they shut off access to port 25 in their firewall and then moved the mail server into a dmz. That sounds kind of odd for an ISP...

Here's a possible fix. In your Outlook settings, set all of your accounts to authenticate through the outbound mail server with that service provider. Your clients would never know the difference.

 

[shopbruin]

Originally posted by: Hubris
I can't send messages with my outgoing school e-mail address with Verizon DSL, either. I have to use my school's webmail.

I get this message: 550 relaying to <address> prohibited by adminstrator.

Piss me the fvck off. I could do it with dialup no problem, but not with DSL.

ugh serious.... i'd have to go home and try again. tech support said "you can't do that" and i just changed the passwords and did it for awhile until they messed it up again. ARGH. and UCLA doesn't allow you to use their outgoing mail servers UNLESS you're on campus.

oh well i graduated anyways... i'd have to change email accounts someday.

 

[Skawttey]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: fjorner

Here's a possible fix. In your Outlook settings, set all of your accounts to authenticate through the outbound mail server with that service provider. Your clients would never know the difference.

This works. I have roadrunner and was not able to send e mail with my school e mail. I went into my account properties and clicked the boxes for 'log on using secure password authentication' and 'my server requires authentication' and it now works.

 

[Cat13]

I stand corrected. Just when I thought I was in the clear, no more outgoing. Oh well, through Cox's smtp I go. No problems now.

 

[jjones]

I just use my own SMTP server software; never any headaches.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: jjones
I just use my own SMTP server software; never any headaches.

With thier setup you can not do that any more.

 

[LeeTJ]

comcast has done this for a long time.

why is it an issue?? i don't mind using comcasts smtp server instead of my hosted one.

it still has my non comcast email address as the return address.

can someone explain to me why this is an issue?

 

[Adul]

cox's smpt servers suck ass. At least when i tried to use them. PLus i rather enjoy having the ability to actualyl send a greater then 5 mb file to someone.

 

[mpitts]

This is standard practice for all of the major ISPs nowadays.

They all block traffic running on port 25 (SMTP). You can run your sendmail server on a different port to circumvent this. I have run into this problem with my remote users using MSN. They couldn't send mail through our servers when dialed up thru MSN.

The only way to fix it is to either use the ISPs SMTP server for outgoing messages (and make it look like it came from your server), or run your SMTP server on a different port.