ENTRIES
Welcome to Eric Cheng's online journal! You are not logged in. [ Log in ]
«  :: index ::  »

Fixing SMTP errors from Yahoo!/AT&T/SBCGlobal DSL

:: Thursday, April 24th, 2008 @ 11:22:18 pm

:: Tags:

This is really, really annoying. My parents have internet service provided via DSL from the convoluted company that is/was Yahoo!/AT&T/SBCGlobal. In the past, if I wanted to send email from my mail client while I was at home, I had to change my SMTP server to match AT&T’s supported server and use my parents’ account for password authentication. This is annoying enough. But recently, Yahoo!/AT&T/SBCGlobal has started requiring sender email registration to send e-mail from their already-locked down SMTP server (!).

I returned home tonight and tried to send e-mail (after changing the SMTP server). Mail.app threw an error, saying that my sender e-mail address wasn’t accepted. Luckily, Adam Nash had written a post about this issue just a couple of weeks ago, linking to Yahoo’s help page that tells you what you have to do, so I logged into my parents’ Yahoo!/SBCGlobal mail account to add and verify my sender email addresses. This is the only way I can send mail via SMTP from my parents’ place. Luckily, my parents don’t use the email address that came with their DSL, so we can effectively use it just to manage a list of authenticated sender addresses for our home connection.

But let’s say you have frequent visitors, all of whom use SMTP to send email from their laptops. In order to allow them to send mail via SMTP, you’d have to:

  1. give them your Yahoo!/AT&T account information for authentication
  2. add and verify their sender email addresses to your Yahoo! Mail account

This is RIDICULOUS.

I recommend boycotting DSL service from Yahoo/AT&T until they stop being so stupid. In fact, I had to order new DSL service yesterday, and this issue was the reason that I didn’t even consider AT&T for my service.

Incidentally, I use a SMTP server on port 2525 that was set up for me by AustinDev, and AT&T DSL seems to let it through. Fastmail.fm has proxy servers that respond to any port, but for some reason, their server doesn’t respond to 2525 when I try it from Mail.app. Too bad!

UPDATE – Chris says:

Go here: http://helpme.att.net/servabuse.php

From the drop down “*Abuse Type:” select “**Opt out port 25″

That looks promising!

Popularity: 4% | San Diego, CA | link | trackback | qrcode | Apr 24, 2008 23:22:18

:: 29 comments (rss)

  1. posted by Adam Nash on Thu, April 24, 2008 @ 11:38 pm

    It’s beyond ridiculous. Even for myself & Carolyn, I now have to have all of her accounts and my accounts “verified” on my Yahoo account.

    Google SMTP also works through their DSL, as long as you use the secure port. Of course, Google SMTP does its own fun trick – it converts every sender to your gmail account, no matter which account you actually sent the email from! (edits headers)

    Adam

  2. posted by Chris Kacerguis on Thu, April 24, 2008 @ 11:54 pm

    Eric,

    Go here:

    http://helpme.att.net/servabuse.php

    From the drop down “*Abuse Type:” select “**Opt out port 25″

    Enjoy.

  3. posted by norm on Fri, April 25, 2008 @ 6:32 am

    We just switched to use a different port as well. Our new ISP (COX) blocked 25 so we added a new port.

    This sentence is funny: Fastmail.fm has proxy servers that respond to any port, but for some reason, their server doesn’t respond to 2525 when I try it from Mail.app.

    Maybe it responds to almost any port.

  4. posted by Andy on Fri, April 25, 2008 @ 8:45 am

    what drives me nuts is that you cannot use gmail’s SMTP servers, because it will make all outgoing mail look like your gmail account. Not cool. Not cool. So I just use my web site’s cruddy SMTP server when I leave home.

  5. posted by Jeff Laity on Fri, April 25, 2008 @ 9:20 am

    Luxury.

    My corporate server is driving me insane. Channels everything through a proxy server at port 8080, so any other port is blocked except for web, ftp and email. This messes up Gogle mail and Gogle calendar. IMAP email is blocked. Blocks a ton of “offensive sites” like Facebook, MySpace and CraigsList. Any offensive language in outgoing email is bounced, which often gets me when I’m replying to someone and forget to clean up the language. For a while they were blocking INCOMING email with bad language and not informing either party! Of course I have to turn off the proxy server whenever I’m not using my laptop from work, since FireFox isn’t smart enough to automatically adjust. And download speeds at work are about 20KB/s on a good day because of all the spam filtering, apparently.

    OK, it’s not at all the same as your personal system that you pay for, but it still drives me batty.

  6. posted by Adman on Fri, April 25, 2008 @ 10:47 am

    It’s almost as if Yahoo/AT&T doesn’t want random people using their SMTP …

    Are you saying that you want to be in charge of who gets access to use their SMTP? What am I missing?

  7. posted by echeng on Fri, April 25, 2008 @ 11:11 am

    Chris — that may be the fix! I just gave it a try, and will report back later. Although, it may take me awhile to report back, since I almost never am home at my parents’ place.

    Oh, and I almost never use port 25. I usually use port 465. ;)

    Adam S. – No, I don’t want to tell AT&T/Yahoo who should be able to use their SMTP server. But I do want them to release port 25 to people who use them as an ISP. We don’t use their email service, but we have physical service from them at our home. Anyone who is on my connection should be able to send mail using a SMTP server of their choice.

    Not only does AT&T/Yahoo block port 25, but they now restrict the use of the only SMTP server they allow a connection to, effective cutting off SMTP for anyone who is not registered as a sender in their Yahoo! Mail service. This has the terrible side-effect of allowing the Yahoo! Mail account associated with the ISP service to send mail from anyone who is verified. So at the moment, my Dad can log into his SBCGlobal account and send email AS ME, simply because I want to be able to send mail from our home connection. This is all sorts of bad.

    Here is another scenario to illustrate how annoying it is:

    Let’s say that I use Yahoo/AT&T for my DSL service at home, but I don’t use Yahoo email. My email is at echeng.com. So I check e-mail using POP/IMAP at echeng.com, but I have to use AT&T’s SMTP server when I’m connected at home. That’s fine. But you have to authenticate using your AT&T/Yahoo email username and password. That’s a little annoying, but it’s still fine… only now, it won’t work. In order to send mail from my address at echeng.com using the AT&T SMTP server, I have to login to Yahoo email and add/verify my echeng.com email address. And if I have two email addresses, I have to add them both.

    This is annoying enough, but let’s say I have three roommates. In order for them to send mail using SMTP, I have to add their email addresses to my Yahoo email account!

    That’s the issue here.

  8. posted by Sha Sha on Tue, April 29, 2008 @ 1:51 pm

    I helped a friend’s dad with a similar problem (he was on pacbell.net and suddenly wasn’t able to send email), and all I had to do was check the box that said his outgoing server required authentication, and it worked.

  9. posted by echeng on Tue, April 29, 2008 @ 3:38 pm

    Sha Sha — that’s not good enough in this situation. Yes, you have to authenticate using your Yahoo/AT&T login, but it checks the “sender” address in your outgoing mail. If it is not registered, the send fails. So in your case, if your sender address wasn’t your dad @ pacbell.net (he used another e-mail address), you would have had to register and verify it before it would have worked.

  10. posted by Aaron on Mon, May 12, 2008 @ 12:29 am

    Eric,

    Thanks a bunch. I had a problem with Army Knowledge Online IMAP sending of email and the Yahoo thing did the trick. I wasted at least 2 hours searching the net before I came across this page. Now, AT&T will send things to my AKO mailrouter and I can function on the go. Cheers.

    Aaron

  11. posted by Androka Faradofay on Thu, June 19, 2008 @ 6:43 pm

    What’s even worse is if a small company is using ATT/Yahoo DSL with interns, co-workers, etc, coming and going, and they are trying to send mail using their mail.MYCOMPANY.com service. Suddenly no one can send email from their MAIL (mac) or Outlook (pc) clients. Well, you can “authenticate” upto 10 email addresses on the one account Yahoo gives you, but that’s it.

  12. posted by Warren on Sun, June 22, 2008 @ 4:06 pm

    Haven’t seen an update on this yet, but i’d like to know if **Opt out port 25 did anything for you on yahoo abuse page per Chris Kacerguis’ instructions.

  13. posted by William on Thu, July 10, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

    It gets worse! Just installed an NAS, and want to set up email alerts. But I can’t because ATT/Yahoo not only blocks port 25, but now apparently they’re blocking 465 and 587. Can’t use ATT smtp server because I can’t verify the sending email address – even if I knew what the NAS was using, they verify by sending an email back to the address, which of course would go to no where…

    I’m going to try the Opt Out form. We did this at home, and it worked for a while and then they killed it again.

    What a bunch of crap.

  14. posted by dottianne7 on Thu, September 25, 2008 @ 8:23 pm

    Sounds like a problem I’m having but don’t see an answer. My problem is this. My ISP is Cox at home. At work, I am connected via LAN via At&T/Yahoo DSL. I realize I have to change my SMTP tags when I change locations but I have yet to get it working at work. Based on what I’ve read above so far, if my Cox email address is not “authenticated” on the company AT&T/Yahoo account, I can’t send out email (using Outlook 2007). BTW, I get email fine. Questions: 1 – how do I get my Cox email address authenticated? 2 – besides checking the box that states authetication required, what else do I need to do? 3 – what is a good port to use for SMTP? I read different ones above. 4 – whose username/password do I enter for question #2 – mine or the AT&T account?

    If I can get the answers to these questions ASAP, I can hopefully get this situation fixed…would like to test out tomorrow…at home now.

  15. posted by Bob on Mon, November 24, 2008 @ 6:49 pm

    Yes – it gets worse! AT&T has removed the ability for a non-business DSL account holder to remove the Port 25 block. If you have a business account, they’ll do it for you. Apparently they think customers will convert to a business account for this privilege.

    This is the kind of stuff that caused me to run to AT&T as the only alternative to Comcastigasm.

    But 24 hours after setting up their DSL “service,” I can’t use any of my long-time email accounts, all attached to their own smtp servers.

    To sum up: This is a load of crap.

  16. posted by paul smietan on Tue, November 25, 2008 @ 11:01 pm

    same problem here, Eric – is there an alternate port to use?

    -Paul

  17. posted by mark on Wed, November 26, 2008 @ 8:35 am

    Located in VA with business relationships around the world, I have not had the displeasure of dealing with the ATT SMTP problem. I was not aware of the issue but heard of the possibility. After hours of troubleshooting, I realized and verified the problem. I solved the problem using SSMTP port 465. Since this is the port Gmail uses I doubt they will ever close it and no ATT verification needed. What made me flaming mad > I could not find a reference on their website.

  18. posted by Michael on Thu, November 27, 2008 @ 8:46 pm

    It isn’t getting any better. I received an email from AT&T yesterday afternoon that said they had “noticed” that I was sending email via a client that did not have SSL enabled.

    Hmmm.. I have 6 email accounts in Apple Mail. Mostly gmail accounts, my sbcglobal account, and one tied in with my work’s domain. ALL of them are set up to use SSL.

    So, after 30 minutes on AT&T’s worthless chat with idiots who don’t know which end of a power plug to put in a wall… I was finally told that I needed to chose between using my other email account’s smpt server OR AT&T’s smtp server. Period.

    After saying that this was not acceptable, she finally said that she too would hesitate to change my email settings since they are working. If I wanted to, I could just ignore the emails from AT&T warning of the smtp/SSL issue…. ummm…OK.

    So this evening… ALL outgoing email is blocked. Even my sbcglobal email not going out. Incoming still getting through. All of my accounts have been “verified” with AT&T/Yahoo as described here and other places. But I did not set all of my other accounts to use AT&T’s smtp server.

    Fed up is putting it mildly.

  19. posted by Deb on Wed, December 10, 2008 @ 9:13 pm

    Another one bites the dust…AT&T/Yahoo is outrageous! We switched from the SBC/ATT DSL service (where you could opt out port 25) to the new u-curse. They have removed the port 25 freedom choice entirely from the abuse page. You can’t send emails through another SMTP server, period. Doesn’t look like port 25, 465, or anything works without their eavesdropping.

    Had to add and verify the sending email addresses from within ATT/Yahoo email account and the verified accounts. Then had to change the outgoing settings to HELP THEM ENSURE THE SECURITY OF MY EMAIL:

    Change the POP server to pop.att.yahoo.com. (didn’t do)

    Change the SMTP server to smtp.att.yahoo.com.

    Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL).

    * Change the SMTP port to 465.
    

    Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL).

    * Change the POP3 port to 995. (didn't do)
    

    Couldn’t they just pass through port 25 traffic to someone else’s server, which is what we all wanted in the first place? Suggested addition to their email configuration changes:

    Run screaming for the hills in frustration. (did do)

  20. posted by corey bryant on Sat, January 03, 2009 @ 1:34 am

    Oh god, I thought this was the issue. I just moved to a semi-rural area in Texas and the only service offered here is AT&T. I assumed I’d plug the computer in, and be able to send and recieve email from 5 corporate email servers (which I maintain at my office) — port 25 is blocked hey? I sat here for a long time and tried to think of a legitimate reason for them to block smtp ports. I’m going to miss Time Warner – and unfortunately the condo I just bought is wired for AT&T, and is locked down. No hope. I regularly get attachments in excess of 12MB, so I’m sure those would be kicked back should I dare to use AT&T’s craptastic server. I guess I’m going to put that extra box in my office to work, throw our mailserver software on it, change the port and bounce just my mail off of it. I can’t really change the port on the servers themselves, as I have way too many clients in the field, and I don’t want to go there. =)

    Why is AT&T so stupid?

  21. posted by John on Tue, January 20, 2009 @ 11:49 pm

    Set up new server at new isp. New isp was a tad slow setting up rDNS (2 days).

    Sbcglobal BLOCKED all mail from new server due to no rDNS.

    Upon request for removal (after setup rDNS) using the assigned request form, sbcglobal / ATT admins said “sure” – and promptly converted the lockout from “bad rDNS” to “spammer”.

    Since then, every request for removal gets a “we already removed you” canned response – and we’re still blocked.

    I propose we all play their game – implement reverse DNS lookup on every web page and mail server – and lock-out all sbcglobal and ATT networks. Serve up a page to the customers of those networks that spells it out – and directs them to contact their customer service department about being censored from the ‘net.

    Easy to implement – easy to reverse as soon as the creeps quit their silliness…

  22. posted by Simon on Thu, January 22, 2009 @ 9:09 pm

    The AT&T FAQ says, port 587 should be used, which worked for me.

  23. posted by Jason on Mon, February 02, 2009 @ 1:03 pm

    I just got off the phone with AT&T Residential DSL Support. Apparently, Level 1 Technical Support representatives are trained to tell you that the Port 25 block is permanent, irreversible, and for your own protection (all wrong). I asked that my call be escalated to Level 2, who after waiting on hold for close to 15 minutes, were able to reverse the Port 25 block in about 90 seconds. After rebooting the DSL modem, all is well.

  24. posted by Geek with an Attitude » Blog Archive » AT&T Yahoo: We Don’t Need Your Business on Mon, February 09, 2009 @ 5:41 pm

    [...] A page of complaints and advice about this issue on echeng.com is here [...]

  25. posted by Sandeep on Wed, February 11, 2009 @ 6:41 pm

    Ah! What a chronicle here. I just got off the phone with At&T tech support and am fuming as they said I will need to upgrade my account! I have had this account for a few years and recently started working on an SMTP program. For local testing I needed to send stuff to myself and lo and behold IT doesnt work. TRaced it to this port issue.

    Now, when I signed up for DSL, they didnt disclose this at all. That I wont get all the ports! Is this legal? they can just take away ports at will? Why should I need to upgrade to a business account for a port?

    I m PO!

  26. posted by Enny on Sat, April 11, 2009 @ 7:40 pm

    I use also port 587 as normal smtp port. That is the message-submission-port. Some email providers may not support/offer that.

  27. posted by Chad on Fri, May 08, 2009 @ 8:18 pm

    Thanks Enny, I just setup using port 587 and things are working so far.

  28. posted by missy sanford on Fri, December 18, 2009 @ 1:52 pm

    I can’t go to http://helpme.att.net/servabuse.php to opt out of port 25 because they are blocking all e-mails. Doesn’t att.net have another way to reach in this instance??

  29. posted by Darryl on Mon, January 04, 2010 @ 10:45 pm

    Called ATT tonight. Got a very helpful tech with an @2WIRE.COM email address. He had me go into the router’s firewall. I went and UNchecked SMTP “allow” and that stopped the block. He was confused. He actually went and checked on it and replied: “I apologize. I know the SMTP issue is counter-intuitive with our router. There was a change in the firmware for your device and the option is in fact reversed. The only thing I can tell you is that it is being worked on and AT&T will provide updates when available. Thanks again!”

    Try REMOVING the check to ALLOW SMTP traffic. That permitted free flow. Also, this is on ATT UVERSE. Thanks for your posting here!

:: leave a reply

Use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

RECENT TWITTER ACTIVITY
ARCHIVES
Journal Home
Where is Eric? (password)
Stuff for Sale
March 2010 (6)
February 2010 (17)
January 2010 (29)
December 2009 (21)
November 2009 (23)
October 2009 (32)
September 2009 (19)
August 2009 (34)
July 2009 (21)
June 2009 (30)
May 2009 (23)
April 2009 (18)
March 2009 (6)
February 2009 (25)
January 2009 (5)
December 2008 (6)
November 2008 (22)
October 2008 (27)
September 2008 (25)
August 2008 (34)
July 2008 (34)
June 2008 (32)
May 2008 (26)
April 2008 (15)
March 2008 (19)
February 2008 (31)
January 2008 (43)
December 2007 (33)
November 2007 (29)
October 2007 (29)
September 2007 (9)
August 2007 (19)
July 2007 (10)
June 2007 (17)
May 2007 (26)
April 2007 (38)
March 2007 (39)
February 2007 (13)
January 2007 (35)
December 2006 (35)
November 2006 (14)
October 2006 (6)
September 2006 (20)
August 2006 (24)
July 2006 (32)
June 2006 (17)
May 2006 (23)
April 2006 (16)
March 2006 (16)
February 2006 (26)
January 2006 (34)
December 2005 (17)
November 2005 (21)
October 2005 (18)
September 2005 (17)
August 2005 (5)
July 2005 (15)
June 2005 (20)
May 2005 (25)
April 2005 (7)
March 2005 (22)
February 2005 (20)
January 2005 (38)
December 2004 (6)
November 2004 (24)
October 2004 (16)
September 2004 (22)
August 2004 (12)
July 2004 (17)
June 2004 (15)
May 2004 (11)
April 2004 (35)
March 2004 (40)
February 2004 (29)
January 2004 (36)
December 2003 (20)
November 2003 (18)
October 2003 (10)
September 2003 (18)
August 2003 (10)
July 2003 (34)
June 2003 (12)
May 2003 (49)
April 2003 (42)
March 2003 (42)
February 2003 (15)
January 2003 (7)
December 2002 (17)
November 2002 (19)
October 2002 (24)
September 2002 (22)
August 2002 (20)
July 2002 (21)
June 2002 (14)
May 2002 (15)
April 2002 (11)
March 2002 (13)
February 2002 (20)
January 2002 (17)
December 2001 (16)
Even Older Journal
Travel Journals

CATEGORIES / TAGS
(5) (2) (2) (2) (11) (4) (1) (1) (1) (4) (1) (1) (1) (5) (1) (1) (5) (392) (12) (1) (1) (12) (10) (1) (1) (26) (5) (2) (1) (4) (1) (31) (5) (2) (24) (1) (3) (4) (1) (2) (89) (2) (14) (1) (1) (9) (1) (11) (171) (1) (1) (1) (3) (1) (1) (1) (6) (419) (5) (1) (1) (1) (69) (1) (7) (1) (15) (3) (13) (2) (1) (1) (1) (1) (84) (8) (246) (50) (34) (1) (53) (1) (1) (1) (1) (1) (2) (1) (1) (15) (2) (2) (1)
VIENNA TENG
Support my friend and favorite singer-songwriter, Vienna Teng!

--- Next Show ---

Schedule coming soon.
[ discography ]

Eric Cheng's RSS Journal Journal RSS
Eric Cheng's RSS Journal Comments RSS

proudly powered by wordpress
script exec time: 2.93s
i hate computers.