The Sendmail Mystery Deepens

Lots of great suggestions to my plea for help with sending mail yesterday. The question I have now revolves around this issue of ISPs blocking the SMTP port (port 25, whatever that means.) I think this is the source of the problem I've been having, and my mother's been having. If I'm understanding this right, using a third-party SMTP provider is not going to help in these situations, because if port 25 is blocked, thus keeping me from sending mail from Earthlink's authenticated servers, it's going to keep from from sending mail from someone else's authenticated servers. Right? Which means we're back where we started from...

Also, gotta love this: I haven't gotten around to stripping the Google ads from the individual entry pages, and so if you look at the ads being served up on this story, each links to a service that would at least partially solve the problem I raised in the original post. Not bad, Google. Not bad at all.

Comments

[Joe Hughes]

I just had to deal with this issue, because my new cable net provider blocks port 25. Fortunately, I use fastmail.fm as my email provider, and they have proxies set up that let you use any port number you want for SMTP, IMAP, and/or POP connections.

[reed]

if you look at the ads being served up on this story, each links to a service that would at least partially solve the problem

Really? These are my ads: :)

Stevens Johnson Legal
Stevens Johnson Syndrome legal assistance free 1-800 call

And:

Stevens-Johnson Syndrome
Complications from Drug Therapy? Free Consultation - 800-852-6299

So they've already given a clinical name to frustrating computer problems for mobile users? And I can sue Earthlink about it? I love it. :)

[Steven Johnson]

I think you're looking at the ads for this story, not the preceding one (the one I linked to above.) Of course, the Google ads change, but I was getting SMTP services pretty reliably each time I reloaded...

[Nicholas Barnard]

My solution to the problem: I use Eudora (okay no heckles) I've set it to use POP3 XMIT. So what it does is it sends the outgoing email out over a POP3 connection which I've never seen blocked. I'm not sure if your specific email provider supports this but I know that Panix.com does and they're a local NYC ISP (with the availability of national dial up numbers via a reseller. Email me if you have any questions...

[jimmyt]

I just activated Postfix, which is absolutely brilliant in it's simplicity and do-it-yourself nature. But, I'm not sure what port it uses to send mail -- assume that if it's port 25, the problem will still persist. And not sure whether you can force Postfix to send on different ports?

James

[brad]

I agree with the poster who said to use Webmail when traveling; this avoids the whole sendmail issue.

I ran into the same port 25 problem with my .Mac account: My ISP won't let me send e-mail via the .Mac SMTP server; I have to send it via my ISP's server instead. When I'm traveling, I just use Webmail for both my .Mac account and my other e-mail accounts, and have no trouble sending e-mail that way. If you leave the e-mails on the server, you can pick them up with your regular e-mail program when you return home and keep them for your records.

[stephen rosen]

steven johnson:
i enjoyed 'mind wide open' so much that i wish to apply some of your ideas to a new book i am writing: "career change ability". the alfred p. sloan foundation commissioned my previous book, "career renewal" about the ability of certain phd scientists (and physicians and attorneys) to change careers. i believe the 'neuroscience of everyday life' has much to say about "career-change chmpions" -- those unusually gifted individuals who change careers happily, easily, and successfully. can we speak?

stephen rosen srosenc@verizon.net

[Andy Polaine]

You could try using Zoë: http://zoe.nu/

It can act as a SMTP server as well as doing some very interesting databasing of your mail, I think you'd like it.

[Andy Polaine]

Just to add to that previous post. I have nothing to do with Zoë except for using it recently. It boasts that it "Googles" your email, which it does in an interesting way. It's in beta at the moment but could become very interesting, which is why I thought you might like it if you haven't seen it already (I haven't trawled your archive to check!).

[Richard Soderberg]

Sendmail now advertises port 465 (SSL/TLS required, authentication optional) and port 587 (SSL/TLS optional, authentication required); not all people choose to enable this. I find the most luck with 587.