Comments on: Emailing from Starbucks: What port 587 is for

By: Casey L

Casey L — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:11:55 +0000

Thank you so much. I’ve mildly bothered for about 5 years by this. Never enough to spend too much time on it, but definitely a problem. I got a new laptop and this is what pushed me to figure something out. 2 hours later and 1 simple solution better!!

By: Brian W

Brian W — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 21:14:40 +0000

I was always taught that 2525 was the alternate SMTP port. It’s good to make note of alternatives just in case!

By: Joshua

Joshua — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 01:28:41 +0000

Strange that I was just at Starbucks today and they (tmobile) seemed to be blocking Port 587. I’ve previously been using Port 587 at Starbucks for as long as I can remember and it has always worked. Please tell me this did not just start today, lol.

By: Jesse David Hollington

Jesse David Hollington — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:21:31 +0000

While I agree with the points about the intended purpose of 587 et al, the reality is that there are some ISPs and other mail providers who are now providing connections on those ports as virtually open relays, operating under the assumption that since it’s not 25, there is no risk.

I agree completely that SMTP authentication should always be required for mail injection, but unfortunately there are still too many fly-by-night operations and large monolithic opinionated ISPs that refuse to understand or accept this.

For this reason, more and more corporate firewalls are now blocking 25, 26, 465, and 587, on principle alone. Further, although ISPs like Rogers provide their own SMTP servers on 587, they’re still blocking access to anybody else’s on these ports from some subnets. I’ve also stayed in more than a few hotels that only provide their own SMTP server, and block all other well-known SMTP injection ports.

So while I agree there’s little reason for ISPs to actually block these other ports, it doesn’t change the fact that they are doing it.

(As an aside, however, the fact that Mail.app so easily lets you choose alternate SMTP servers on-the-fly has been a godsend for situations like this)

By: James

James — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:20:11 +0000

I agree. In many cases port blocking is just shooting yourself in the foot. Authenticating seems like a better solution to me.

By: cameron

cameron — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:15:57 +0000

Personally I use port 26 for all my smtping needs. However I haven’t ever tried SMTP over SSL…

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:43:39 +0000

Fastmail has server proxies that can be accessed through any port. I’ve found port 80 and 463 (http/https ports) to be useful in the past.

Look for proxy in the fastmail faq:
http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts/ExternalMail.htm

By: Nigel Metheringham

Nigel Metheringham — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:18:11 +0000

Blocking port 25 for most end user connections is a good thing - port 25 is for server to server mail comms and was never intended for end user mail injection.

Port 587 (MSA) is specifically designed for end user mail injection and is specified as TLS encrypted and authenticated - there is therefore no good reason for ISPs to block that port as its not a botnet spam source.

By: Gabor

Gabor — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:23:05 +0000

With Postfix Enabler and MailServe you have been able to do it for quite some time now.

http://cutedgesystems.com/software/PostfixEnabler/
http://cutedgesystems.com/software/MailServe/index.html

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:51:43 +0000

Same situation for me… for better than a year I would sit in frustration trying to email from starbucks…

Different solution though!

I had to set mine to use port 80… that did the trick for me.