Comcast blocking port 25 / Outlook 2000

[vipereyes]

Comcast informed me that they blocked port 25 stating the following:

In an effort to help prevent spam and ensure the security of our network and customers, Comcast has modified your modem’s settings to prevent the sending of email on port 25. That is the default port email programs such as Outlook Express use to send email. We’ve taken this action because we may have detected virus-like activity from your modem or received reports from other email providers that mail from your modem generated complaints from their users. Please read this message to understand how this action may impact your ability to send email and what you should do next.

Can someone explain what "virus like activity" is or why my modem would generate complaints? Does this mean that someone is using my computer to spam others?

I use AVG virus protection and regularly scan for malware.

Thanks,

Kim

 

[goombawaho]

Either you are A) Infected with malware/virus that has opened up it's own mail server on one of your computers and is blasting out emails all over the universe OR B) YOU are intentionally sending a LOT of emails from somewhere and Comcast is saying "you're spamming".

If you are confident that you are not intentionally sending what could be considered a lot of emails, the first thing you need to do is to download MalwareByte's Anti-Malware and/or SuperAntiSpyware and put it on each PC and run a full scan.

If it finds some malware, clean it up and then call Comcast and request that they open port 25 back up. Chances are that they won't just because it's a big organization, but you could get a ticket number and keep following up.

In the mean time, you need to set your outbound email settings in your client to use an alternate port.

http://baremetal.com/support/email_msa.html

 

[goombawaho]

^^^^ OR you can use their webmail online which is NOT affected by PORT 25 cut-off.

 

[vipereyes]

hmmmm. I do use MalwareByte's Anti-Malware and recently unpdated it and rescanned but it didn't find anything except a couple of tracking cookies.

Can you define "alot of email" I do forward quite a few joke emails but I wouldn't consider it excessive. Do you know what they would consider too much?

Kim

 

[goombawaho]

I have NO idea what they consider too much. I would think it would be in the thousands to register on their end. You'd have to ask them and maybe CONFIRM that they go the right MAC address for your cable modem. It COULD be a screw up on their part, but I doubt it. Get the MAC address of your modem and call them and see what they say.

Something has triggered them to finger your modem's MAC address as being the source of a lot of email.

Do you have any employees that could be using the internet connection for their own on the side "spamming" business???

Do you have a wireless connection that is unsecured that a neighbor could be using to run his spamming operation?

I know these don't sound likely, but something has tripped their alarms and I'm just trying to point out the possibilities.