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

[Chyeld]

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.

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.

Re:Not Comcast

[FauxPasIII]

I use Comcast, and my outbound tcp/25 is blocked entirely. I can _only_ go to their SMTP relay.

If you don't filter, you get blocked.

[Russ Nelson]

If an ISP doesn't filter their outgoing email to make sure that it's own users aren't spamming, they WILL get blocked. I'm on a super-secret anti-spam mailing list which I can't tell you about, and everybody there cheerfully admits to blocking their own users' outgoing spam. It's necessary.

Re:If you don't filter, you get blocked.

[ajayrockrock]

If an ISP doesn't filter their outgoing email to make sure that it's own users aren't spamming, they WILL get blocked. I'm on a super-secret anti-spam mailing list which I can't tell you about, and everybody there cheerfully admits to blocking their own users' outgoing spam. It's necessary.

dude, spamassassin-users isn't that secret. :)

Re:If you don't filter, you get blocked.

[adminstring]

The first rule of the super-secret anti-spam mailing list, which you have just broken, is that you do not talk about the super-secret anti-spam mailing list!

Looking further...

[Spazmania]

Digging further into the Cox situation, the Cox subscriber said:

I tried to send an email. The email only contained text. The text Cox
objected to was "http://my_homebox_IP_number/"

I haven't checked the Cox TOS lately, but don't they prohibit running a home web server like all the other residential internet providers? Hasn't this been the case since for essentially the same length of time that the Internet has been a commercial venture?

Re:Looking further...

[rob1980]

Yes, I'm guessing they set the filter up so you can't email somebody a link to http://my_homebox_ip_number:8081/ and have it be a spoofed Paypal signin page or something like that.

Re:Looking further...

[mabinogi]

That's got nothing to do with it though.

Whether or not you're running a home server, sending an email containing a URL certainly shouldn't breach the ToS. They're not going to filter emails referring to a breaching server, they'd contact you about the server or terminate your service.

Re:Looking further...

[Vellmont]

I haven't checked the Cox TOS lately, but don't they prohibit running a home web server like all the other residential internet providers?

They might. What does that have to do with this situation? It's very unlikely Cox has some kind of filter that looks for specific references to their own IP address pool, and filters out email with that criteria. It's just not worth the effort.

What's MUCH more likely is they have a spam filter that looks for email that looks like spam, i.e. "http://some-ip-address:some-port-number." Spammers do this all this time, real email very rarely so. The home-server TOS thing is just a red herring.

inline virus filtering

[sgt scrub]

They could do inline virus filtering easier, cheaper, and still not be intrusive. IMHO they are being rude when they could be helpful.

Re:Phrases

[Psychotria]

No, but it is worrying. For example, I often have to resort to emailing people using PDF's which contain the bulk of my message because their stupid ISP marks me as spam. I think it is because a lot of my emails involve giving people advice on plant species names--which always makes me go "wtf" when my email bounces because it is "spam-like". Since when is giving a person advice on species "spam-like"? Maybe it's the latin I don't know. I don't use my ISP for outgoing email (I run my own email servers) but for those people who do... their emails better not be innocent because they'd probably be filtered as spam. Much better to write a long message about penis enlargement than something serious--it's more likely to pass through the filters.

Text of posting (TFA)

[Stanistani]

I will no longer be able to point to my home server on these lists because Cox
rejects such messages as spam. The message given when I try is:

Sending failed:
Could not write file The message content was not accepted.
The server responded: "ID_INTENTIONALLY_REMOVED This message was
undeliverable. This message has been found to be a potential spam message,
and has therefore been blocked. Please visit http://coxagainstspam.cox.net/
for more information.".
Disk full.
The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix the problem
(e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the 'outbox' folder.
The following transport protocol was used:
smtp.east.cox.net

. . .

I could care less that their disk is stuffed and suspect it is misdirection.

This censorship is only a minor inconvenience but the message it sends is
ugly. It says, in so many words, that the internet is for your consumption
not participation. Changing messages to point to my physics page gets around
the immediate problem, but most people do not have such a thing nor should
they be forced to host things on someone else's computers. I'm paying for my
bandwith, why can't I use it for what I want? Finally, subscribers now know
that every word of every message sent is filtered. Will they filter my IM
conversations next?

Re:Text of posting (TFA)

[Spazmania]

It's a mixed metaphor:

I couldn't care less = I don't care

merged with

I could give a damn = I could care but I don't

and became

I could care less.

Re:Text of posting (TFA)

[ScrewMaster]

Except that it's a very unlikely thing to say sarcastically.

Except that you're just wrong. The phrase "I could care less" is usually only about a notch above saying "fuck you, and the horse you rode in on." As the GP said, it's a colloquial expression and unless you've been exposed to it in the proper context you probably just won't get it. Attempting to analyze such expressions in any language using the kind of logic you were trying to apply is a fruitless exercise. Like a lot of other things in American English ... you just have to know. If you don't, just accept it because that's what the rest of us do. It's not the literal meaning of the phrase that matters.

Re:Not Comcast

[simcop2387]

hmm thats strange, i'm using comcast in the atlanta area and can easily do smtp to other hosts on the internet.

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.

Where, exactly, is the story?

[pongo000]

It's not clear to me that Cox actually scanned the message body in its determination that the e-mail in question was spam. There could have been any number of indicators that caused Cox to reject the outbound message.

I also note that Cox's TOS specifically prohibits the hosting of servers:

Servers. You may not operate, or allow others to operate, servers of any type or any other device, equipment, and/or software providing server-like functionality in connection with the Service, unless expressly authorized by Cox.

A more accurate title for this story would be: "User in violation of Cox TOS upset over Cox efforts to enforce TOS."

My advice to said user? Buck up and get business-level service, or find yourself a real hosting service for your mail server.

Re:Where, exactly, is the story?

[Niten]

A more accurate title for this story would be: "User in violation of Cox TOS upset over Cox efforts to enforce TOS."

The problem is that the TOS are bogus, and there's absolutely nothing the customer can do about it. It's not as though we have a half dozen other cable subscribers to choose from and to keep each other honest; aside from the phone company, Cox is the only game in town for many folks. The theoretical benefits and corrective effects of free-market competition do not operate in such an environment.

Seriously, "servers of any type [...] server like functionality"? Congratulations, you've just described anything that accepts an incoming TCP or UDP connection. If I cannot at least SSH and VPN into my home network from abroad, my so-called Internet connection loses 50% of its utility.

I'd love to see somebody with the resources to do so stand up to these guys and sue them for false advertising. If you perform unwanted filtering on the incoming and outgoing access of your users, you're no longer selling a full Internet connection. The most troubling part is that Cox isn't even the worst offender in this regard, not by a long shot.

Prohibited

[dereference]

I haven't checked the Cox TOS lately, but don't they prohibit running a home web server like all the other residential internet providers? Yes. They may not actively police it, of course, but there it is.

Holy WTF?!?

[Just Some Guy]

I can understand and am sympathetic to ISPs who force outbound traffic to go through their servers. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I really do get what they're trying to accomplish. I also understand ISPs having spam filters on their outbounds, and think that's actually a pretty good idea. If you really need to send a virus so someone, then you should be technically competent to encrypt it or otherwise shield it from a scanner.

But never in a million years can I even remotely condone actually scanning the text of emails and rejecting ones an ISP doesn't like. That's just Evil.

Re:Holy WTF?!?

[bughunter]

But never in a million years can I even remotely condone actually scanning the text of emails and rejecting ones an ISP doesn't like.

I recommend that the phrase "Cox Blocked" be granted status as the official 'net jargon for any message blocked by an outgoing content filter.

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:Phrases

[grcumb]

Since when is giving a person advice on species "spam-like"? Maybe it's the latin I don't know.

Cialis vincit disfunctio penilis!

Not just ISPs-- antivirus software too

[cmburns69]

Some antivirus packages also block some outbound email as well. At a previous company I worked for, we had to send out numerous survey invitations. Norton would quietly queue and scan all the outbound data (going to port 25)-- which worked in many cases. Except that it was slow. And there was now way of knowing how much data (if any) was still queued. And if the computer was restarted before Norton finished processing the queue, the data was silently lost (even though a "Accepted for delivery" message was returned to the sending program).

These limitations wouldn't be hit by your normal 1-or-2 emails at a time users. But for the rare legitimate high volume senders, like us, it was a problem. IT wouldn't let us turn off Norton alltogether (and rightly so, as we'd seen virii on our network in the past), and there was no way to selectively disable that "feature". Eventually we forced to make our outbound mail server listen on a different port, so that Norton wouldn't scan/lose the data.

At least with COX you get a notification saying that the message couldn't be sent, with Norton, the messages might just quietly disappear.

Kudos to Cox Communications

[merc]

I would like to first state that I am a Cox cable internet subscriber in the Phoenix area. I also happen to wear the abuse desk hat for Arizona's oldest ISPs.

I can say without question that the amount of spam we get from cox is almost NIL. I constantly see spam coming out of Comscat's network, also Verizon and from time to time Time Warner but RARELY Cox. In fact I can't remember the last spam I received that originated from their network.

I don't mind that my egress SMTP port is blocked forcing me to use a MSA (mine is configured to use SMTP AUTH with TLS, which works nicely). The fact is that Cox has their act together in my opinion. The fact that they are a white hat in the abuse category makes me want to continue doing business with them. I don't think what you're seeing here is intentional censorship. It would actually be irresponsible for Cox not to filter outbound mail traffic, since they are bound to have customers that run malware infected / zombied host computers.

Anyway, I say "good job Cox" :)

P.S. I work for an ISP that is NOT Cox--which one might think after reading my glowing statements (in fact we compete against Cox)

Re:Kudos to Cox Communications

[rmerry72]

It would actually be irresponsible for Cox not to filter outbound mail traffic, since they are bound to have customers that run malware infected / zombied host computers.

You know, I'm getting sick of the prevailing attitude that ISPs and other "institutions" should limit legitimate activities with a technology and filter everybody's behaviour because some customers are bad apples (either intentially or through ignorance).

Don't penalise me and limit my activities - limit those who are adversly behaving. ie, block those that do have malware infected machines not mine! I do the right thing and protect my systems. Why should I should I be penalised by the highest common ignorance factor?

You are promoting this attitude by saying "We will do business with them because they bottled up their customers nicely and it saves us work" instead of "They have lower quality customers and have to bottle them. Not going to touch that crowd".

What am I saying? We live in a moddle-coddled world where nobody takes responsibility for they're own actions but instead focuses on fretting and controlling everybody else's actions. Arse above tit. With liberty comes responsibility.

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."

Re:Not Comcast

[DCTooTall]

that's actually been a pretty common net-wide standard for awhile to block port 25. Logic being that many old spam virus's used to set up an smtp server on the infected machine and start spamming directly from the infected computer bypassing the isp's SMTP server. By blocking port 25 on the outskirts of the ISP network and forcing customer to use their SMTP it allowed better access controls to prevent spam. and more importantly, kept entire ranges of Dynamic IP's from getting blacklisted due to spam.


In the past few years with the increase in teleworking, remote access of email, and personal domain names, as well as the evolution of the spam-virus, that ISP's have moved to allow access to port 25 outside their network, instead doing IP access controls on their outgoing SMTP server, and using SMTP Auth to allow people to connect from outside their network.

ISP != Evil (not necessarily, anyway)

[cbone00]

I own part of a small ISP and CLEC in the South.
We do not use spy on our customers phone calls or throttle their P2P traffic. We are not considering monitoring their Internet traffic for copyrighted (or any other) data.
Maybe some of the big boys are out there using these draconian tactics, but your average, everyday, garden variety, small ISP is just trying to make a living providing a quality alternative to the behemoths out there.
Please don't lump us in with those guys.

All that said... We *do* filter inbound email traffic for viruses and SPAM. We do block inbound port 25 to our dynamic IPs.
We view these actions as our duty to our customers and to the rest of the Internet to do our small part to help at least slow down the rampant propagation of SPAM on the Internet.
We currently block about 95% of the email that hits our domains - and that number is slowly climbing. Do we occasionally throw out the baby with the bath water? Probably so, but it is rare. I can't even remember the last complaint we have gotten about this, so this tells me that our filters are highly effective.
As for blocking port 25, we do this to guard our address space against our own customers being irresponsible with their PC's and not keeping virus software up to date. Getting our address space blacklisted would effect ALL of our customers.

It is not about getting rich. Hardly so. Email is the probably the biggest drain on resources that any ISP faces. If we didn't take these steps, we probably would not be in business.

Everyone wishes we had the less evil Internet of yesteryear back, but it isn't going to happen. The Internet is a cesspool. We have to defend ourselves in the best way we know how.

ILOVEYOU

[AEton]

About ten years ago, it became impossible for me to send e-mails to my girlfriend with the subject line "ILOVEYOU."

The error message from Comcast -- something about rejection -- was pretty classic.

Re:Not Comcast

[squallbsr]

I also have Comcast, I was able to send email over SMTP (port 25) any time I pleased. That was until my brother decided to bring over his virus ridden, spam spewing, zombified windows machine over and hook it up to my network (while he was house sitting). They promptly blocked port 25, I got home and couldn't send email.

I had to call their very rude Security Something Department, they said my options were
1. 'Use a different port because other ports can be secured while port 25 cannot be secured.'
2. Use the Comcast alternate port SMTP-AUTH Server (of which I don't know my login/password for)

I told them I wanted option 3:
3. Re-open port 25.

They decided to tell me that they could as a ONE TIME courtesy re-open the port, but 'it will probably be blocked again because the problem that caused it to be blocked probably wasn't fixed' (even after I told them that I had found the problem and fixed it, in addition to monitored all transmissions over port 25 for an hour)... So I fixed my OpenBSD firewall pf rules to only allow 'trusted' computers to only be able to contact MY email server, and access the whole internet unfettered, the 'guest' machines have access to web and a handful of other ports (none of which is 25)...

Moral of the story: Stop using windows... /flamebait

Comcast sucks too.

[mlwmohawk]

In the Boston area, comcast fuckers are blocking port 25. So, even though people have legitimate uses for the internet connection they pay for, these companies are taking it on themselves to block standard connection protocols.

First its port 25, because of spam. Then it will be P2P because of copyright. Then it will be ssh because of terrorism. Then it will be, inspired from the new york story yesterday, filtering web content to prevent false alarms.

Fuckers. Bury your head america.

When people talk about fascist Germany, they focus on the extermination of jews and the holocaust, and while those were horrific acts, they are not what the Nazi party was about. They were the result of the acts of fanatical and arguably insane men who had gained power in the Nazi party, not the Nazi party, per se'

The Nazi party was about power and the exercise of it. It was about bringing pressure on the citizens from all aspects of society to conform to it. It used social structures and industries and laws to bring people under control. It is EXACTLY what is happening in america today. Its all the little things slowly picking away at the big things, until the big things crumble. Freedom of speech? Nope, now we have "free speech zones," where no one will hear you. I could go on, but the /. crowd already knows.

Just like the Reichstag fire in 1933, the world trade center in 2001 gave the neocons the ability to enact limits on freedom. After that, industries which were once regulated in order to protect the citizens are now deregulated and destroying citizens who do not conform, RIAA, MPIAA, walmart, etc.

ISP censorship is just one more piece of it. The internet is becoming the primary conduit of communication and fascist america must have its citizens controlled, just lake Nazi Germany needed its citizens controlled.

All this isn't a conspiracy theory either. No conspiracy theory need exist. Our government (of the people, by the people, bla bla) is supposed to protect us. If it stops protecting us from big companies, those companies will naturally do the work for their own gain.

Now everyone in the USA is afraid. Some of terrorists, some of losing heath care, some of losing their job, their house, what ever. Fear, as the nazi's will tell you is a powerful tool to harness.

Welcome to neocon amaerica where companies sue their customers because they can. Companies dictate what you can do with your property, because they can, and if you do anything about it or protest, you can lose your job which means your house and health care.

Sorry for the rant, but I can't be the only one who sees this whole thing in this way

Re:What?

[ZeldorBlat]

I tried clicking on your link but I think my ISP is somehow blocking it.

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

Cox does have business level cable and I've been quite happy with it. Used to use Speakeasy DSL but got spooked when Best Buy purchased them and switched to Cox. Thus far (little over a year) it has been great. I run 3 servers which do a moderate amount of traffic (maybe 50-100GB up a month) and have heard not a peep out of them. No ports are blocked that I can see, the servers run HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, IMAPS and SMTP between the group of them and it all works fine. They even have an SLA such that in extended downtimes you get monetary credit.

The difference, of course, is that I pay a good bit more. I'm not sure what a consumer level cable connection costs for 10mb/1mb but my understanding is it is somewhere in the range of $50/month. I pay more like $150/month for the business grade with 8 static IPs (the IPs do add a good portion of that).

However I'm ok with that. My usage is much in excess of what you'd get from a normal consumer, I'm ok with the fact that I have to pay for that. It's still not a bad price all things considered.

If you want the cheap consumer connections, then you need to deal with the consumer restrictions which usually include "no servers". It isn't as though they are being assholes and saying "No you can't ever do this," they are just saying "If you want to do this, you need a more pricey service."

Re:Phrases

[DingerX]

disfunctionem erectilem, I believe, is the correct ending to your spam.

Re:Not Comcast

[SCHecklerX]

You may have at one point been flagged as being 'infected with a virus'. This is when my comcrap connections always got nuked (I host a mailing list). But instead of filtering just outbound, they would kill everything.

I got tired of fighting with them (and after the headaches they caused with my overpriced business class connection when they took over for the ISP they bought out I was not going to pay for that service again), and discovered DynDNS's mailhop outbound and mailhop relay services. Problem solved. You can have stuff forwarded in on a nonstandard port and sent out that way too.

http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/outbound.html
http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay.html

Servers?

[gillbates]

Or server-like functionality?

So, what exactly, defines a server? When you think about it, there's just traffic between two points. From a semantic perspective, posting to /. could be seen as "serving" text to a remote computer...

But, I think this kind of highlights the apparent Cox conceptual model of the internet:

• Businesses create the news, opinions, and "interactive" content. The subscriber consumes the content business creates. Subscribers do not participate in opinion, create content, or otherwise create outbound traffic, with the exception of:
• Email.
• Games, filesharing, IM, and the like are all under the radar - they are "server-like" applications when it comes to dealing with the subscriber, so they can arbitrarily be denied service without breaking the TOS.
• Web servers, SSH, terminal services, VPNs, etc... are business class services, for which a commercial account is required.

The optimist in me hopes I'm wrong on some of the above points, but the pessimist knows to suspect the worst.

Re:Servers?

[arminw]

.....So, what exactly, defines a server?.......

How about; A computing device that accepts random, unsolicited connection from other computing devices". It's generally the kind of connection that a NAT router prevents unless especially set up to allow that. As part of the service, many ISPs supply a wireless NAT router which blocks incoming traffic from the local network.

Re:Not Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

25 blocked ubiquitously here too. Instead of using cox's smtp service, I use the SMTP relay service at http://www.smtpport.com/ to tunnel regular smtp to my own company server through a nonstandard port. A decent workaround for when you don't have shell access or secure smtp. So far cox hasn't filtered or blocked it.

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:Not Comcast

[element-o.p.]

The problem with an ISP using SMTP-auth for connections outside their network is that SMTP-auth is only as secure as the least secure password used in your customer base. Given that people are generally lazy and prioritize convenience over security, that means odds are that any decent sized ISP *will* have at least one (and probably very many more) weak passwords, and *that* means that the ISP's mail server *will* be an open relay as soon as the spammers figure it out.

This isn't just theory -- at an ISP I used to work at, we saw this happen. We started getting UCE complaints from other ISP's, but couldn't figure out how spammers were relaying through our server. We traced it down to one customer's e-mail account, but couldn't figure out how hosts from outside our netblock were relaying through our server. Finally, one of the admins noticed that SMTP-auth was turned on (it wasn't supposed to be). I've lost all faith in SMTP-auth on an ISP server since.

Comcast blocking shortened URLs in emails

[1sockchuck]

According to the NANOG list (North American Network operators Group), Comcast has been discarding emails that include a link created using EasyURL, one of many services designed to provide shortened URLs for email links. This could be an anti-spam policy, as URL forwarding through these services is sometimes used by phishing scams to obscure the link's true destination.

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.

Try an alternate port service ...

[ScrewMaster]

I use an alternate-port SMTP service: my mail doesn't go through my ISP's server. That was after my outgoing mail got blocked and their customer service (I use the term loosely) people couldn't tell me why. I was just told that the problem should "correct itself" in a week or so. Well, it eventually did but by then I'd taken steps to never be in that position again. Now I just poll their mailbox for the occasional notification but I haven't sent a message through my ISP's SMTP server in years.

What about corporate responsibility

[dedmeet]

In this day and age, with most busy mailservers fending off about 60% of their load as Mass Spam storms, it is almost negligent to allow all of your customers unlimited access to smtp to any destination. Yes, there will always be outcry about 'censorship' and 'big brother'. It's a shame it's not the same crowd that shouts about the torrent of Spam and viruses that comes from high bandwidth, unaware mom & dad users (and us techies too - I can't remember the last Open Relay I saw configured by a mom & dad!) incidentally, scanning for and removing http://ip.ip.ip.ip/ links from Email is a pretty good way of detecting and blocking the outbound phishing attempts that each year result in millions of dollars being drained from the bank accounts of the uninitiated. Censorship is designed to prevent a particular content, subject or message from being propgated. I'm pretty sure you can re-write an Email in such a way as it does not get blocked. I'm pretty sure that if you want to run an SMTP server, you can get permission. if however, you happen to be a virus, you're hopefully s**t out of luck.

Re:What about corporate responsibility

[gujo-odori]

Bravo! I work in the email security industry, and I completely agree with you. Not only is filtering the outbound mail stream a matter of good Internet citizenship (and something a number of our ISP customers do), it's also practical. For any business, filtering the outbound can help keep your SMTP hosts off of blacklists. In the case of businesses with confidential information that could be stolen (which is almost all of them), it can also be a practical measure to boost IT security.

You're spot-on about censorship, too. Preventing the sending of outbound spam by zombies is not censorship for the simple reason that it is not mail that the owners of those computers want to send; it is mail that is being sent without their permission via theft of their resources and service. As for people who are deliberately spamming, one could argue that it's censorship, but the ToS of pretty much any ISP forbid spamming. People who want to be allowed to spam should not sign up with ISPs that forbid it; if they do so anyway and the ISP enforces its ToS through measures including outbound spam filtering and suspending or terminating the spammer's account, that's tough.

If only the EFF could get on the right side of the spam issue. They do so much good work in so many areas, but tend to wrongly take the side of spammers, somehow viewing it as censorship. That is wrong: there's no freedom of speech in spamming. People can say anything they want by taking out a billboard, or hosting a website, or running a blog. That's freedom of speech, and I support it, even if I think the message is a load of crap. The freedom to present a message should not be dependent on the content of the message (with reasonable exceptions, like the classic "Shouting 'fire!' in a crowed theater" example). Spamming is like going to the store, stealing a can of spray paint, then kicking down my front door and spray painting your message on my living room wall. That's not freedom of speech; it's theft, vandalism, and breaking and entering. So is spamming.

Re:Not Comcast

[Matt Perry]

It is, however, Windows' fault that for a long time in the late '90s and early '00s Windows was a festering pit of security holes that practically begged spammers and other maltards to abuse it.

That may be true, but we aren't talking about the distant past. Windows may still have security issues but that doesn't mean that a person can make it reasonably secure: keeping up to date with patches, using anti-virus, avoiding insecure software such as Internet Explorer, etc. Plenty of people use Windows without it getting infected. And my point still stands. The fact that he allowed his brother to connect an infected machine to his network isn't the fault of the OS.

Re:Not Comcast

[Sorthum]

It's not you being a grown-up, it's your idiot neighbors who click everything under the sun without regard to security. I think the solution is to block by default, and have a mechanism to open it up, as other posters have stated.

Re:Not Comcast

[Sorthum]

That's not incompetence, that's by design. The RFC for 587 submission states that it requires the use of SMTP-AUTH, rendering it useless for most forms of spam-spewing malware; an incompetent ISP will filter it, not open it.

Re:Not Comcast

[konohitowa]

A friend of mine uses Comcast in the Indianapolis area. I talked to him on the phone and he was surprised that I hadn't received an email from. We went through several tests and concluded that Comcast was indeed scanning his outbound email and filtering items that hit some type of keyword filter. He was able to send the email only when he slightly altered the subject text. The annoying part of it was that it was a "silent" filter - he got no indication that the email had been rejected. It just went straight off to /dev/null (so to speak).

Re:Not Comcast

[element-o.p.]

But by the time you detect the spew, how many sites have already blacklisted your server?

Not possible to secure Windows.

[whoever57]

That may be true, but we aren't talking about the distant past. Windows may still have security issues but that doesn't mean that a person can make it reasonably secure:

I don't think that Windows (XP at least) can be made secure today. Yes, people can use it securely, but I don't think it is possible to make it inherently secure. I saw a recent exmple of a machine that got infected while it was configured with a major anti-virus (fully updated) and Windows was set to auto-update. Yes, I suspect that using Firefox, or just not going to those sites would have avoided the problem, but that says nothing about whether the machine is secure or not.

There was a recent article that showed that the performance of anti-virus s/w has got worse over the past year or two. People who think that Windows can be secured are in denial! The basic problem is that it is difficult to run as a limited user. Quickbooks requires administrator rights, I recently came across video capture and editing s/w that requires admin rights (despite Studio running on the same machine perfectly well for limited users). I am sure there are other programs. Yes, I know about "run as", but my claim is that it is difficult.

Re:Not possible to secure Windows.

[pentalive]

The only inherently secure computer is one without a network capabilities. or untrained users that refuse to use virus protection, spy ware detectors and love to click
on any bright shiny item they come across.

One place had a check printing computer - completely disconnected from the network just a computer and a laser printer... It got virused..?? I had to un-virus it. Someone wanted the latest technology in screensavers, employed a floppy disk.

Please that's not 1/2 as bad

[failedlogic]

My IS fil ers my o -bound pac ets to many we ites. Ju t make it har er to re d wh t I wri e. I'm a re ly a go d spell er trust me.

Re:Phrases

[rabiddeity]

Wow. That reads like a curse from Harry Potter fan fiction.

Re:Not Comcast

[rmerry72]

It's not you being a grown-up, it's your idiot neighbors who click everything under the sun without regard to security. I think the solution is to block by default, and have a mechanism to open it up, as other posters have stated.

Oooh, yeah let's regulate it. What would be the mechanism to open it up?

• Licences? Pass an exam every two years to prove your qualified to operate your computer?
• Or a blue slip for your computer? Only registered computers can connect?
• How about turning the Net into consumption only, like your TV. That's safe. Maybe restrict it to qualified software engineers?
• Age restriction? Only adults can connect (even dumb ones)?

We had that a while back. It was called ARPANet. Progress is a circle and we improve by going backwards.

How about this: If you are an idiot who clicks on everything GET OFF THE DAMN TRAIN! A leave it for us grown ups.

There is a mechanism already - its called money. Pay more, get more. Nothing to do with security or idiot neighbours, purely about making more profit. Like everything these days.

Re:Phrases

[ClickOnThis]

Anybody got any ideas of what phrases are being poof'd by cox? It may be that they are looking for repeated phrases in several successive e-mails as a sign that someone is sending spam. I say this because of a personal experience with Cox in May of last year, when I was e-mailing resumes as part of a job search. Then one day, Cox started rejecting my outgoing e-mails that contained my resume and cover letter. I contacted customer service and got this incredibly unhelpful canned response:

Dear XXXXX,

Thank you for your e-mail. I understand you are experiencing
difficulties sending e-mails stating messages are being rejected by the
server. I am really sorry for this inconvenience.

Our messaging team is adding functionality to the email platform that
will have the ability to detect spam emails and notify the you that you
are attempting to send spam, and that it will not be sent. Therefore,
when a your email has been identified as a spam, you will see an error
message. Please visit the link below for more information:

http://coxagainstspam.cox.net/

I hope you have found the information above useful. If the difficulty
persists or if there are any further inquiries you would like to
address, do not hesitate to contact our dedicated department for further
assistance.

Have you tried our customer support site? Visit

http://support.cox.com/

to find answers to many of your Cox High Speed Internet questions FAST,
including "click to fix" automated solutions and LIVE online chat
support 24/7!

Thank you for choosing Cox Communications as your friend in the digital
age. In other words, Cox said "Yep, your outgoing e-mails were flagged as spam and not sent, and we don't care. Have a nice day." Sheesh.

I was able to get around the problem by sending my resume as an attached RTF instead of DOC (both created with OpenOffice.) I'm guessing this change was enough to convince their filter that the messages with RTFs attached were not the same as the previous ones with DOC files.

Eventually the problem went away, and happily I did find a job. Still, I was pretty dismayed at how dismissive and unhelpful their "dedicated department" was.

Re:Not Comcast

[stefancaunter]

5000? In Canada, ISPs won't let more than 400 out *per day* through their mail gateways even on a commercial line. You have to set up your own mail sending system. Standard practice is to force all mail through their gateway. Checking message content (no I haven't read TFA) seems reasonable. You want privacy, that's your business, but average use is going to get checked out all the time. Nobody talks on 25 in Canada unless you pay commercial rates.

Re:Not Comcast

[mr.big_pig]

I don't know how Comcast detects it, but if they see spam or receive a spam report involving your modem they block port 25. No warning, apparently Comcast will refuse to lift the block. It has happened to a few of my clients and friends.

Re:Not Comcast

[gr8scot]

The problem with an ISP using SMTP-auth for connections outside their network is that SMTP-auth is only as secure as the least secure password used in your customer base. You're right about the least secure password in the user base defining the easiest route for a spambot, but then I think you went too easy on the ISPs, or admins at ISPs.

Given that people are generally lazy and prioritize convenience over security, that means odds are that any decent sized ISP *will* have at least one (and probably very many more) weak passwords, and *that* means that the ISP's mail server *will* be an open relay as soon as the spammers figure it out. OK, accepting, for sake of discussion, that "people are generally lazy and prioritize convenience over security," how do you blame the customer instead of the network administrator, whose job it is to ensure the operation -- which by definition includes the security -- of that network? I consider the necessity of "strong" passwords obvious, and common knowledge among anybody who has any business at all in a server room, and never the responsibility of Joe Sixpack. It's not "lazy" to come home after work, and do something other than the job of my ISP's network administrator. Tools for generating strong passwords are easy to find and not particularly hard to write, either, if the CEO doesn't like the color scheme or something. It's also easy, on the server, to check that customers are creating passwords equal to or greater than a certain length, containing alphanumeric, both upper- & lower-case letters, and more, with simple regular expressions. There's no excuse for being in charge of an ISP's network and not knowing everything in this paragraph, or being sure you have somebody on staff who does.