said by RARPSL:

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said by drharry:

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A correctly implemented PORT25 block AUTOMATICALLY redirects all PORT25 requests to the blocking ISP's SMTP Server NOT (as Earthlink does) refuse to make the connection to a Non-ISP Server by just letting the connection attempt time out.

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Either way, it still forces all outbound SMTP traffic through an outage-prone, packet-sniffing-prone bottleneck. Ugh.

If this is the wave of the future I'm not too happy about that.

There are other ways to tackle the spam problem without this sledgehammer approach.

said by richb01803:

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said by RARPSL:

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said by drharry:

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A correctly implemented PORT25 block AUTOMATICALLY redirects all PORT25 requests to the blocking ISP's SMTP Server NOT (as Earthlink does) refuse to make the connection to a Non-ISP Server by just letting the connection attempt time out.

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Either way, it still forces all outbound SMTP traffic through an outage-prone, packet-sniffing-prone bottleneck. Ugh.

If this is the wave of the future I'm not too happy about that.

There are other ways to tackle the spam problem without this sledgehammer approach.

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I agree. As for PORT25 blocking, how hard is it to have the ISP (when it gets the "CONNECT ME TO ISPX's SMTP SERVER" request) do its own connect to the server and see if it offers a AUTH response to the EHLO (then just drop the connection via QUIT)? Such a response could then trigger a "Let the user get his connection" action since the SMTP server can be considered as "SPAM LOCKED DOWN" and acceptable as a connection target.