Frontier: Blocking port 22 because of illegal files?

Thu Mar 26 02:31:35 UTC 2015

I've had a handful of clients contact me over the last week with
trouble using SCP (usually WinSCP) to manage their website content on
my servers.  Either they get timeout messages from WinSCP or a message
saying they should switch to SFTP.

After getting a few helpful users on the phone to run some quick
tests, we found port 22 was blocked.

When my customers contacted Frontier, they were told that port 22 was
blocked because it is used to transfer illegal files.

I called them, and got the same ridiculous excuse.

Just a friendly heads-up to anyone from Frontier who might be
listening, I have a few additional ports you may wish to block:

80 - Allows users to use Google to search for illegal files
443 - Allows users to use Google to search for illegal files in a secure manner
69 - Allows users to trivially transfer illegal files
3389 - Allows users to connect to unlicensed Windows machines
179 - Allows users to exchange routes to illegal file shares
53 - Allows people to look up illegal names

-A