Telekom: Port 25 Blocked

There have been issues regarding the widely used Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and etc of late. The issue seems to be the blocked port 25.

There is a reason why this port has been blocked. This was done to help reduce spam emails that are received everyday to our mailboxes.

Attached below is an official email from Telekom Malaysia in an official statement to all of its customers:

Dear Valued Customers,

Telekom Malaysia Bhd wishes to inform its customers about TM's initiative in combating spam in its Internet Protocol network to improve our quality of service.

Recently many anti-spam organizations have blacklisted a large number of IP addresses from TM's network. Due to this many of TM's customers have been unable to send emails from their mail servers to companies who might be using database from the above mentioned anti-spam organizations. 

These spamming activities by a small group have affected a large number of our customers, regardless of the nature of their Internet usage.

Therefore, TM is taking immediate action to address this issue. Effective 3/12/2007, TM will block OUTBOUND Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) traffic or port 25 for all out going e-mails from dynamic IP addresses. Only Outbound SMPT traffic from smtp.streamyx.com and smtp.tm.net.my will be allowed.

With this implementation, Streamyx customers who have their own mail server will not be able to send emails. As an alternative TM is providing an open relay server for these customers who use dynamic IP addresses. 

Please be assured that TM is proactively taking all possible measures to ensure that these spamming activities do not reoccur in the future. We seek for your kind cooperation to implement the necessary security measures to protect your computers that are connected to the Internet; from any email abuse, virus infection, spyware or malicious code.

How does this affect Malaysian email users?

Having a preplanned method to prevent more spam is great, but with most applications running on the default port 25, many users and customers will face the issue where they have difficulty sending email out or connecting.

Is there a way to ensure that my custom email with EVERWORKS is running smoothly?

Yes EVERWORKS wants to ensure that our email hosting solution provides you ease of mind and with as little hassle as possible. Find our custom email solution here.

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If you have more to add on this as to why and how this has affected you please feel free to share in the comments section below.