[ale] If you're on Bellsouth DSL, I recommend changing providers.

[Mike Murphy]

What's the major problem?: I own my own domain. My email comes to my 
address at that domain. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. mike at tyderia.net is 
a whole lot cooler than something like mmichael453 at bellsouth.net. 2. 
when I decide to use my choice as a consumer and switch providers, I can 
take my email address with me.

To make this work for me, I have to have that mail delivered somewhere. 
I have the choice of paying another third part to catch it so I can read 
it, or having the mail directed to my host connected to the internet. In 
fact, I do both (so that I have a backup mx to catch mail when my 
primary host is down). In general, this works well, since I can use the 
host I control to filter spam and virii, and can read my mail via an ssh 
connection to a shell from anywhere in the world.

Yes, there are other alternatives to this solution that may or may not 
work as well, including webmail solutions and 3rd party hosting, but for 
the amount of control I get, the overall cost of the solution to me, and 
  the benefits of having a 'portable' email address, I've found over the 
last many years that this works best.

Now, I'm a responsible systems administrator, and I run a secure relay. 
I have sendmail forwarding my mail through bellsouth's mail server (so 
they can see easily if they want what my volume of mail is, and for that 
matter what the content of my outbound mail is if they really want). I 
suspect, since my volume of inbound mail through their system is very 
close to 0 (really only the spam ^H^H^H^H^H informative messages about 
bellsouth new services they'd like to sell me), that compared to the 
average zombied windows box, my actual costs to them are lower than the 
average. Add to that that I'm not running a warez site on port 80, etc. 
and I'm almost no trouble to the support department, and I'm paying for 
their most expensive service (and using their bundled long distance, 
complete choice plan, etc), and I'd think that I'm exactly the sort of 
customer they want, and a profitable one at that.

I don't care if they want to cut off outbound port 25. I think that's 
more than sensible, and I applaud them for it, and I suspect many of the 
other customers unhappy with this would agree. Cutting off inbound port 
25 (and the ports for Secure IMAP, secure POP, and secure SMTP, but not 
their clear text equivalents) is just annoying. And doing so with no 
customer notification, and technically vapid after the fact 
"explanation" is inexcusable. Fortunately, since I've got a portable 
email address, switching isn't all that painful, so I've got 
speedfactory working on that for me.

Unsurprisingly, there has already been some phone company red tape on my 
switch: "well, you line doesn't say its certified for 3.0 megabit", says 
Darryl. "Huh, that's odd, I have it now from the phone company", says me...

Mike


Jonathan Rickman wrote:
>  
> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On 
>>Behalf Of J. Cary Howell
>>Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 8:51 AM
>>To: ale at ale.org
>>Subject: [ale] If you're on Bellsouth DSL, I recommend 
>>changing providers.
>>
>>Hey all:
>>
>>According to Bellsouth (response via email attached below) 
>>port 25 (they call it filtering, I call it blocking) will NOT 
>>ever be lifted.  It seems if you want to use anything but 
>>Bellsloth's mail server, you're going to have to change providers.
> 
> 
> What is the major problem with just relaying through their servers? Some
> bizzare pricacy concern? They are allowing relaying from their entire
> subscriber netblock anyway. If you're that paranoid about privacy then you
> should reconsider your choice of communications medium in the first place
> rather than worrying about Bellsouth.
> 
> --
> Jonathan
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale


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Mike Murphy
781 Inman Mews Drive Atlanta GA 30307
Landline: 404-653-1070
Mobile: 404-545-6234
Email: mike at tyderia.net
AIM: mmichael453
JDAM: 33:45:14.0584N  84:21:43.038W
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