Outgoing SMTP Servers

Thu Oct 27 03:07:58 UTC 2011

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:

> Interesting... Most people I know run the same policy on 25 and 587 these
> days...
>
> to-local-domain, no auth needed.
> relay, auth needed.
>
> auth required == TLS required.
>
> Anything else on either port seems not best practice to me.
>

RFC 5068 covers the best practice, and it's not what you've got above.

Allowing unauthenticated inbound mail on port 587 defeats the entire purpose
of blocking port 25 - the front door is now closed to spammers, but you've
left the back door open! (Security through obscurity saves you here in that
spammers rarely use port 587 - yet).  There isn't a single situations where
you should be expecting an unauthenticated inbound message on the
'Submission' port (is, 587)

As much as some ISPs still resist blocking port 25 for residential
customers, it does have a major impact on the volume of spam leaving your
network.  I've worked with numerous ISPs as they have gone through the
process of blocking port 25 outbound. In every case the number of end-user
complaints has been low enough to be basically considered background noise,
but the benefits have been significant - including one ISP who removed not
only themselves but also their entire country from most of the 'Top 10
Spammers' list when they did it!

  Scott.