All I wanted to do was use the email address I had used for over
five years. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently, the answer is yes for some ISPs. If you have not
encountered this problem yet, read on. If things don't change, you
will.
We recently moved to Kentucky from Atlanta. In Atlanta, I admit that
I was spoiled by BigNet DSL service. I ran our own email server, which
my wife and I used. All mail sent to the domain that I own went to one
"catchall" email account. Our email server periodically collected all
of that mail and sorted it into our mailboxes according to address. We
used this local server for SMTP as well. The server connected to our
ISP's (BigNet) SMTP server every 10 minutes to transfer outgoing
mail.
When I moved to London, KY, I found that DSL service was not
available in my area (and that there were no plans in that direction)
and that cable modems would not be available for at least six months.
ISDN was too expensive; satellite service was also a bit pricey and
required a Windows PC. In addition, I felt that satellite service would
be unreliable, even if it weren't coming through a Windows PC. That
left me with only the "least worst choice," to borrow the words of
Donald Rumsfeld - dialup.
At this point, I will digress briefly. I have heard countless horror
stories about DSL service and the installation thereof. However, I
should note that my DSL installation went smoothly and occurred on
schedule. In the 2+ years I had DSL service, I had only one problem. A
piece of equipment in the central office died and had to be replaced,
knocking out all DSL service in my area for about 6 hours. I commend
BigNet for the service I received and will definitely miss them. But
back to the story.
Fortunately, we already had an Apple AirPort network at the house in
Atlanta. The AirPort base station plugged into a 5-port hub (to
accommodate the Windows-based email server and my AirPort-challenged
Power Mac 7500). The
hub then connected to my D-Link firewall appliance, which in turn
connected to the DSL router. With the forced downgrade to dialup
service, I certainly did not need the DSL router anymore. With the
AirPort base station now connected directly to a phone line and serving
as the main point of connection to the Internet, I could put the D-Link
firewall away as well.
I knew that the dialup connection would be slower. I found out that
we could not go above 33.6 on a dialup from our house. I did not think
it would be that slow! Although we got a service plan that allowed
unlimited Internet access, I knew that from a practical standpoint we
would not have the "always on" connection that DSL allowed (although
the AirPort base station has performed flawlessly in maintaining the
Internet connection throughout the day).
"Well," I thought, "Things could be worse." Little did I know, I was
about to find out just how much worse.
The first day my wife was working at home, she sent four emails. All
of them came back as undeliverable. Hmm, must be a configuration issue
on our server.
Everything seemed correct. I had entered our ISP's SMTP server in
the appropriate field on our email server. For some reason, the
messages just weren't "going."
I fiddled with it for over an hour. I used my iBook to connect
directly to the ISP via modem and had the same problem. So the issue
seemed to be at the ISP and not at our local email server.
Unable to resolve the problem, I called our ISP's technical support.
What transpired next can only be described as a twisted and surreal
trip through the looking glass.
The call started off innocuously enough. I talked to a real live
person in under two minutes and explained the problem. No complaints so
far. However, when I received their proposed "solution," I hit the
roof.
It seems that all I had to do was change my email address on all
messages to our ISP-assigned email.
So all of a sudden I had to change my email address? I purchased and
maintained the domain so that we could avoid this very thing. I wanted
us to be able to keep the same email address regardless of where or how
often we might move (this was long before free email services sprang
up).
In addition, Verizon prevented me from using any SMTP server
other than theirs. Even worse, the ISP-assigned email address was
something like, "123abc9xyz*$?_user@mail.verizon.kentucky.com." Now
that's certainly easy to remember.
Start using this email address? I politely explained to the nice man
that it would be a cold day in the Dominican Republic when I did
this.
He said that another option would be to use the ISP email address in
the "from" field and put my preferred address in the "reply-to" field.
That solution might have been acceptable to me, but for the fact that
Entourage does not have a "reply-to" field! There is only one place to
put the "from" email address, and it also causes replies to be sent to
that address. This shortcoming is also present in a number of other
email programs and seems to be more prevalent on the Mac. Outlook
Express and Netscape Mail for the PC contain the extra "reply-to"
field; on the Mac platform, only Netscape contains the field. Microsoft
could be blamed for not adding the "reply-to" field to their Mac
products.
However, in this case, I don't think the blame is warranted. All the
"reply-to" field would do is to supply a workaround for a problem that
should not exist in the first place. The fact that the problem does
exist is squarely the fault of ISP's.
The Verizon representative explained to me that this requirement was
put in place to curb spam. I explained to him that the way to curb spam
is to merely require, like many other ISP's do, that the user
authenticate before sending email. Most email programs are
capable of doing this. I do not understand, and in fact vehemently
dispute, the need to require users to show the ISP email address as the
"from" identifier.
Either way, the ISP has a record of who sent the email.
Authentication is a much less intrusive manner of achieving the same
result. And forcing me to use the ISP mail server? A textbook example
of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If the CIO's of these
ISP's were doctors, a conversation with a patient might go something
like this:
- Patient: Doctor, I don't feel well.
- Doctor: What seems to be the problem?
- Patient: My little toe has been sore for several days.
- Doctor: Let me take a look at it. Hmm....
- Patient: How bad is it?
- Doctor: Well, you appear to have a slight fracture of the toe, but
it is simple enough to treat.
- Patient: What is the treatment?
- Doctor: We will amputate the leg at the hip. That should fix the
problem.
We all think spam is bad and want to curb it. I can appreciate that
sentiment, and I agree with it. However, I wish someone would take on
junk snail-mail with the same zealousness.
Some days I receive literally dozens of spam messages. Through rules
put in place either on my mail server or my email client, many of these
go directly to the trash. Many other suspicious messages get the
subject line appended with the word, "SPAM." After verifying that these
are indeed spam, I delete them. It causes me maybe two minutes of extra
work a day.
When I get home and go through my snail-mail, that is another story.
I usually have several pieces of junk mail. I have to give each one at
least a cursory glance to verify that it is indeed junk. Then I have to
throw it away, sometimes filling up my trash can, which I then have to
empty. My junk mail, along with that of all my neighbors, is carried to
a landfill where it is deposited, taking up space there as well, and
having a negative environmental impact. And don't even get me started
about all the trees that gave their lives at the beginning of this
cycle!
Even more intrusive and offensive than piles of junk mail are those
telemarketing calls that always seem to come just as we sit down for
dinner. The state of Georgia has put in place a "no call list" where
consumers can pay a small fee to get their name on this list to signify
that they do not want to receive unsolicited sales calls. If your name
is on this list and a company calls you, that company is subject to
some fairly harsh punishment. A few other states have started exploring
similar programs, but this still represents just a drop in the
bucket.
Corporations can clear-cut forests to fill our mailboxes with offers
for 10% off at the local department store. Telemarketers can interrupt
our evenings with virtual impunity. Yet ISP's bravely attempt to
protect us from the scourge of spam.
In truth, they are really only trying to protect themselves. They do
not want to get blacklisted for having servers that allow spam relay. I
don't blame the ISPs, but the methods some of them choose to employ go
far beyond what is required to prevent the problem at hand. I am not
going to change my email address or even my email client just to suit
my ISP. Instead, I have changed my ISP to one that allows me to use my
personal email address and preferred email client. To do otherwise
would be to allow the tail to wag the dog, and I refuse to give in.
I actually maintain two ISPs. I use one as a "primary" and the other
as a backup, as well as for use when I am traveling (so that my wife
can continue to connect at home when I connect while on the road). Both
of them allow me to use my own email address and both support the email
clients I use. One of them forces me to authenticate before sending
mail; the other does not force me to authenticate, but only allows me
to send email when I am connected to the Internet via their dialup
service.
Both of these are commonsense approaches that do just as much to
reduce spam as the draconian measures mentioned earlier, and without
having undesired side effects.
I have not intentionally singled out Verizon. They just happened to
be the first ISP I signed up with. After my conversation with Verizon,
I called some other ISPs and found out they had substantially the same
measures in place. Luckily, I did locate some ISP's that took a more
balanced approach to this issue.
In addition to being rational about the spam problem, both of my
ISPs are Mac- and AirPort-friendly. The two ISP's I use are SurfBest and Volaris. I am not endorsing either of these
providers, but I did want to let our readers know that they have worked
out well for me.
What do you think this SMTP issue? Have you had similar problems? I
would like to know. Just click on my name at the top of the column to
send me an email. And while you are sending email, send a message to
those "Big Brother" ISPs who would try to dictate the email address and
client that you use: Just say "no."
