How Pervasive is ISP Outbound Email Filtering?

Erris writes "A member of the Baton Rouge LUG noticed that Cox checks the text of outgoing email and rejects mail containing key phrases. I was aware of forced inbox filtering that has caused problems and been abused by other ISPs in China and in the US. I've also read about forced use of ISP SMTP and outbound throttling, but did not know they outbound filtered as well. How prevalent and justified is this practice? Wouldn't it be better to cut off people with infected computers than to censor the internet?"

Comments

Profit comes first

[techno-vampire]

"Wouldn't it be better to cut off people with infected computers than to censor the internet?"

If they did that, it would lower their income and cut into their profits. Filtering outbound email costs less, at least in the short run and that's all the typical MBA is interested in. Their idea is to move to a new company before the long-term damage they've caused becomes evident. (I'm not just wanking, here; I asked an MBA about it once and that's what he told me.)

Re:Profit comes first

[SeaFox]

If they did that, it would lower their income and cut into their profits.

That's assuming they actually close the customer's account or credit for the time out. Some ISPs do not, since the issue is generally a virus or other malware on the customer's PC (in other words, not the ISP's fault).

But you response overall is still correct. If they keep mucking around with the email, they still save money because eventually the customer gets sick of it and gets a Yahoo account instead. Now Comcast is still getting the same $40/month, but without having to provide mail services.

Amen

[davidwr]

ISPs should ask you what services you really need when you sign up for a new account:
"I'm a normal user, let me have what normal users get"
"I'm a power user, please turn on ___, ____, and ___"
"I'm a power user and I really really really know what I'm asking for, please turn on everything."

Then let them change it at any time, either permanently or, if they only need it for awhile, for an hour, a day, or a week.

Once you do that you can hold customers responsible for things like letting bots run loose spamming the planet over an available outgoing port 25.

Re:Not Comcast

[Bender Unit 22]

I'd say that every ISP should do that, that is, if you could get it unblocked if you requested it or via some online account management.
99% of all people wouldn't need it anyway(except the bots on their machines) and the ones who do, would know how to open it. Of course it is a not the ideal way to solve the problem, but it's all we got for now.

Re:Not Comcast

[cheater512]

Blocking every port under 1024 and having a touch tone phone interface to unblock them would be ideal.
That way there is no way for a bot to automate it (ok maybe if they still have a analog modem but unlikely) and its pretty easy to unblock yourself while keeping the ISP's workload low.

That would cut out a lot of the net's problems overnight and make it extremely difficult to bypass.

Re:Kudos to Cox Communications

[rmerry72]

So it would be better for Cox to allow any old botnetted-computer to spew spam?

No. Kill the connection of those computers. Don't block and filter my computer because Joe Idiot has malware. Cut him off and make it his responsiblity to clean his property. If I had a spiking phone that was causing disruption to the telephone network they'd disconnect my phone not start filtering your phone conversations. If my car was a defect I wouldn't be allowed to drive.

If your mail situation is that important, buy a business-class account.

Come on, are you telling me sending an email is an add on to the basic funtionality of the internet, and optional extra? "Oh, you want "clean" water? Well I suggest you upgrade to our business service. Our residential water pipes only deliver untreated effluent."

You forgot about the US government

[soren100]

However, filtering also raises the "you are now liable for what they say to an extent" issue that the whole Safe Harbor thing was suppose to fix for ISPs and could definately cost a huge pile more than just cutting access and losing customers. People have raised that idea as wel about AT&Ts plan to filter their network for copyrighted material.

The answer I have to that is "9/11 Changed Everything".

Seriously -- when the US government asked the telcos to commit surveillance crimes against the US citizens, only Qwest refused. Usually, breaking the law is a bad thing, but the US government was offering lots of money to the telcos, and presumably the promise not to prosecute. So the only company that got in trouble was the one following the law. And somehow the Qwest CEO that refused the deal ended up in jail. Meanwhile Dick Cheney is desperately trying to get immunity for the cooperating telcos for their crimes. See how that works?

So on the surface of things scanning and filtering our email might seem to be a bad busines move. But if the same US Government that got illegal telephone surveillance of US Citizens is also going for illegal surveillance of our emails, email filtering starts to make much more business sense.

It used to be that the idea of the US government secretly finding out what was in your emails was in the tin-foil hat realm. But the illegal surveillance of telephone calls would have been as well, along with secretly torturing people in secret overseas prisons. As well as "constitution-free" zones such as Gitmo that are paid for by US taxpayer dollars.

So if you have a government that scans your telephone calls, email, and web-surfing habits, you get very close to a goal of "total information awareness", which was one of the government's programs that was renamed and shuffled around after the public got very upset.

Re:Not Comcast

[Matt Perry]

Moral of the story: Stop using windows...

I'd say the moral is don't let people to connect devices to your network without your approval and possible oversight. It's not Windows' fault that your brother connected his infected machine to your network.