SMTP solution when on the road?

[Sgt Owens]

When traveling I never know who my on-the-road ISP will be so sending mail
requires a third party SMTP. I've tried a free one but spammers destroyed
it and now that service is heavily blacklisted and useless.

I have my own website. Is there a way I can send mail from the road through
my website, or does anyone have any other creative ideas? Thanks.

Sgt Owens

 

[saz]

When traveling I never know who my on-the-road ISP will be so sending mail
requires a third party SMTP. I've tried a free one but spammers destroyed
it and now that service is heavily blacklisted and useless.

I have my own website. Is there a way I can send mail from the road through
my website, or does anyone have any other creative ideas? Thanks.

Sgt Owens

Do you have webmail capabilities through your web host? Most provide
that free of charge, and it's already built into CPanel.

I have used mail2web.com in the past.

 

[Spartanicus]

When traveling I never know who my on-the-road ISP will be so sending mail
requires a third party SMTP. I've tried a free one but spammers destroyed
it and now that service is heavily blacklisted and useless.

Install a smtp server on your portable, then you can route directly
without the need of an ISP provided smtp server.

But this off topic here.

 

[Carolyn Marenger]

Many ISPs offer some form of web based email access. Check yours. If
they do, then it is a simple matter of logging in and checking, replying,
and sendinf mail.

Carolyn

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

Per Sgt Owens:

I've tried a free one but spammers destroyed
it and now that service is heavily blacklisted and useless.

I have my own website. Is there a way I can send mail from the road through
my website, or does anyone have any other creative ideas? Thanks.

I'm not very knowledgable in this area, but what I'm hearing is that when you
use a certain address, the volume of spam soon makes that address useless.

Somebody who knows something probably has a better idea, but what I do is spend
six bucks a month for Cotse.net. This gives my domain name a home for email
(web stuff is somewhere else) and offers a comprehensive list of anti-spam/mail
control tools like SMTP-level GoldList, sender WhiteList, recipient WhiteList,
Baysian filtering, SpamCop, unlimited addresses and so-forth.

Unfiltered and unprotected, my domain name was getting 6,000-7000 spams per day
when I checked about six months ago, probably more as I write this - yet I see
only one or two each day. The vast majority are dictionary attacks.

I have a "real" address that I share with friends and is just a few letters
instead of a name - unlikely tb included in a dictionary attack. I also try to
put everybody who sends me legitimate email on the sender WhiteList.

Everybody else gets either a manually-created address that I add to the GoldList
and WhiteList or an address in the format of yyyymmdd.DomainName.Net which
automagically becomes part of the GoldList and WhiteList until it expires on
yyyymmdd.

When one of my manually-created addresses starts attracting spam, I just remove
it from the GoldList. I seldom make up a replacement/notify whoever it was
given to because the reason it started attracting spam is probably related to
whoever was entrusted with it.

I use the yyyymmdd facility from time-to-time, but usually do the bogus
address/GoldList/WhiteList thing because I derive some perverse satisfaction
from knowing who is abusing my addresses - especially the commercial outfits
that have the "Don't Share My Address" checkbox on their screens.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Install a smtp server on your portable, then you can route directly
without the need of an ISP provided smtp server.

How would that help ?

SMTP is SMTP. It doesn't matter if your machine is trying to talk to
another SMTP server from your own mail client, or from your own MTA
(aka SMTP server). The remote SMTP server will either accept your mail
or it won't, and this choice is due to whether it trusts you, not what
program you're running to implement SMTP.

To "route directly" as you describe it, that assumes that "many SMTP
servers trust other unknown SMTP servers". Now this _used_ to be true,
but spam killed it. These days such trusting SMTP servers are termed
"open relays" and even if you can still find one, it's quite probably
blacklisted.


(When I travel, I use my mail provider's web-mail interface. I hate
it, and I have to cc: myself to keep copies in the real place. But
it's less painful than trying to make SMTP authentication work in a
reliable manner)

 

[Lauri Raittila]

(When I travel, I use my mail provider's web-mail interface.

I just use ssh tunnel to my smtp server.

 

[Sgt Owens]

Lauri, I Googled ssh tunnel and it looks interesting but above my level of
expertise. Is there an easy ssh tunnel solution you can point me to?
Thanks.

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,]

When traveling I never know who my on-the-road ISP will be so sending mail
requires a third party SMTP. I've tried a free one but spammers destroyed
it and now that service is heavily blacklisted and useless.

I have my own website. Is there a way I can send mail from the road
through
my website, or does anyone have any other creative ideas? Thanks.

Your host should offer you an alternate port (other than Port 25, which most
ISPs now block) so that you can send email via your domain name, regardless
of which ISP you connect with. If they don't offer you one, request that
they do. If they decline your request, find a new host. ;-)

--Tina

 

[Andy Dingley]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,"

Your host should offer you an alternate port

Oh great, voodoo security. 8-(

If it's secure, stick it on 25. If it's not secure, don't stick it
anywhere. Port scanning will find it wherever you "hide" it.

 

[Andy Dingley]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Lauri Raittila

I just use ssh tunnel to my smtp server.

That's great, but presumably it means you're running your _own_ SMTP
server, and you've set up SSH access to it. I don't know of any ISPs
who offer this sort of access.

 

[Lauri Raittila]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Lauri Raittila


That's great, but presumably it means you're running your _own_ SMTP
server,

No, I am not...

and you've set up SSH access to it. I don't know of any ISPs
who offer this sort of access.

Hm. It's my university (not the one in Utrecht, their IT department
sucks). So you can't buy it.

I would think this is business opportinity to someone. There must be
plenty of people having problems on finding smtp server to use with their
laptops when traveling. Plenty of rich businessman. If someone makes
money with it, I would like to have some too...

(webmail is not really usable alternative, it sucks on offline use - and
internet in moving objects is not that usual.)

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,"


Oh great, voodoo security. 8-(

If it's secure, stick it on 25. If it's not secure, don't stick it
anywhere. Port scanning will find it wherever you "hide" it.

You don't exactly understand, I think. ;-)

ISPs block you from sending email, that isn't hosted on their network, on
Port 25. Port 2525 can be just as secure as Port 25 (who cares if someone
knows you allow outgoing email on Port 2525??). But, by offering Port 2525,
for example, you greatly help your hosting customers' by allowing them to
circumvent their ISPs blocking of Port 25.

More and more hosts are opening up an alternate port, so that their
customers can continue to send email from (e-mail address removed)...without
having to be tied to their ISPs SMTP server.

--Tina

 

[Toby Inkster]

ISPs block you from sending email, that isn't hosted on their network,
on Port 25.

Mine doesn't. Don't think I've ever been on an ISP that did.

 

[Andy Dingley]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,"

ISPs block you from sending email, that isn't hosted on their network, on
Port 25.

No they don't. They block _other_people_ from connecting to an open
SMTP relay you might be hosting.

An ISP that does block outgoing 25 is just a crook, Run away.

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,"


No they don't. They block _other_people_ from connecting to an open
SMTP relay you might be hosting.

An ISP that does block outgoing 25 is just a crook, Run away.

Most major ISPs block Port 25 now.

My point is, this has nothing to do with security (on the hosts side) as you
were suggesting. Its merely providing a service to the customer, by
allowing them to circumvent their ISPs blocking of Port 25. That's all,
nothing more.

Its really not an argument or debate...its simply a nice thing for hosts to
do for their customers. If your host won't accomodate you, since most major
ISPs now block Port 25, then you might want to find a host that does allow
you to send on an alternate SMTP port.

--Tina

 

[Toby Inkster]

To "route directly" as you describe it, that assumes that "many SMTP
servers trust other unknown SMTP servers". Now this _used_ to be true,
but spam killed it. These days such trusting SMTP servers are termed
"open relays" and even if you can still find one, it's quite probably
blacklisted.

"routing direct" does not imply "open relay".

Routing directly means that my own PC sees I'm sending an email to
example.org, it uses DNS to look up the MX server for example.org,
connects to port 25 on that server and sends the message.

The other option is to use your ISP's mail server, in which case your PC
doesn't bother checking who the message is to, connects to
mail.yourisp.com and sends the message. Then mail.yourisp.com does all the
hard work.

Open relays are a third situation. Somebody has a message bound for
example.org and they send it via a completely unrelated third-party
server. This has spam implications, which is why running an open relay
is now frowned upon.

 

[Andy Dingley]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,"

If your host won't accomodate you, since most major
ISPs now block Port 25,

Not for outgoing. No doubt some do, but "most" certainly don't.

There's no need to block outgoing 25 at all, because there's nothing
"bad" to connect to through it. An open relay is a bad thing
certainly, but we've addressed that problem by clamping down on open
relays - if necessary, by blacklisting them. In an environment where
open relays are now extinct (to practical purposes) there's just no
problem with allowing ISP customers all the outgoing 25 they might
wish.

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc,]

"routing direct" does not imply "open relay".

Routing directly means that my own PC sees I'm sending an email to
example.org, it uses DNS to look up the MX server for example.org,
connects to port 25 on that server and sends the message.

The other option is to use your ISP's mail server, in which case your PC
doesn't bother checking who the message is to, connects to
mail.yourisp.com and sends the message. Then mail.yourisp.com does all the
hard work.

Open relays are a third situation. Somebody has a message bound for
example.org and they send it via a completely unrelated third-party
server. This has spam implications, which is why running an open relay
is now frowned upon.

I didn't get Andy's last reply and Google Groups seems to have dropped it as
well. :-(

--Tina

 

[Andy Dingley]

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Toby Inkster

"routing direct" does not imply "open relay".

True enough formally, but there's still a risk in there. The spammer
might only be able to spam members of the destination server's
organisation (i.e. it's open, but no longer a relay) but that's still
a nuisance.