Fixing SMTP errors from Yahoo!/AT&T/SBCGlobal DSL (Computers)
:: Thursday, April 24th, 2008 @ 11:22:18 pm
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:
- give them your Yahoo!/AT&T account information for authentication
- 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.phpFrom the drop down “*Abuse Type:” select “**Opt out port 25″
That looks promising!
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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
Eric,
Go here:
http://helpme.att.net/servabuse.php
From the drop down “*Abuse Type:” select “**Opt out port 25″
Enjoy.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.