COX blocks outbound smtp

[David Mandala]

On Fri, 2003-06-27 at 11:11, Eric Lee Green wrote:
> On Friday 27 June 2003 10:12 am, Craig White wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-06-27 at 09:22, David Mandala wrote:
> > > That is a big problem. My wife's notebook had been setup with the
> > > necessary forward command and then she took the laptop to her new job.
> > > Fortunately the first email she sent was to me, when she did not hear
> > > back from me she called.
> > >
> > > I checked her mail logs, saw the message was sent and accepted for
> > > delivery. It NEVER arrived. Then I reset her mail server to send
> > > directly and had her resend the mail, I got it in seconds.
> > >
> > > Anyway long story short, be careful if you use a laptop or you may lose
> > > outbound mail.
> >
> > ----
> > Makes good sense to me - are they going to generate an email for
> > everyone who wants to use their mail server from an unknown source?
> > Where would they send the email to? The fictitous return address used by
> > spammers?
> 
> The problem is that the COX SMTP service should reject the attempt to send 
> EMAIL with a "Relaying not Allowed" error message, rather than accepting the 
> message then disappearing it into the twilight zone. My own mail server will 
> disappear EMAIL to invalid addresses into the twilight zone, but does send 
> the proper "Relaying not Allowed" response. 

Exactly, the correct thing to do is reject the attempt, not silently
drop the mail. Especially since they are the reason that my wifes laptop
is forced to relay through them from home. 

If they were handling mail correctly all that would happen is that the
mail would queue up until she got home. With what they are currently
doing if she forgets to switch her mail setup she loses all outbound
mail.

-- 
David IS Mandala
gpg fingerprint 8932 E7EF CCF5 1B8C 1B5C A92E C678 795E 45B2 D952
Phoenix, AZ (480) 460-7545 HP, (602) 741-1363 CP
http://www.them.com/~davidm/