Verizon Blocking the Sending of Outbound Email

October 22nd, 2009 | Comments Off
Posted by Tim under General PC Advice, How To, Microsoft Office

Has your email stopped going out? Can you receive but not send? Do you have Verizon as your Internet Service Provider? Here is the explanation and fix for it.

Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to start blocking TCP Port #25 on all home and some business accounts.If you use a 3rd party email system (not verizon’s email, that still works) they are going to block the most common port over which people send out email.

What this means is that if you have your email hosted by another service, say godaddy.com or 1and1.com and use Verizon as your Internet Service Provider (ISP), you can still receive mail but you won’t be able to send it. Thanks for the warning, Verizon!

How to get around this issue…

  1. Use Verizon’t email. A trick to get you at least somewhat locked into staying with their service…
  2. Switch your Verizon account to a Business account with a Static IP Address. This is, of course, more expensive than what you currently have.
  3. Use your email host’s webmail. No, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird will not work.
  4. Switch the port number from 25 to 587 and hope that your email host has that port open. Click here for directions on how to switch Outlook from port 25 to 587.
  5. You can click HERE to read Verizon’s instructions on how to change other programs to port 587.

And just in case you don’t believe me that Verizon is blocking this essential email port, just click HERE and read what they had to say.

Tim Biden

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Shame on You, Linksys!

February 10th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Posted by Tim under PC Networking, Tech Talk

Linksys,

One of my client’s neighbors recently called your company for support because she didn’t know how to get her WPA key after her computer was wiped clear because of viruses. You told her to reset the router back to factory settings but then wouldn’t tell her how to set it up again! “Your router is out of warranty” is your reply. So now her entire company is in worse shape because she didn’t have the authority to spend $40.00 of her boss’s money.

That is just bad business.

  1. You find out her problem.
  2. know her router is out of warranty
  3. You have her reset her router.
  4. You can’t help her to restore it back to working order because it is out of warranty.
  5. You offer to charge her to do it.

Shouldn’t you mention these facts before you have her reset her router and knock the entire company off the Internet?

It is such reasons that I refuse to sell Linksys products. I truly hope that you will change your way of business but I doubt it. You’re owned by Cisco and you are the industry’s 800 lb. gorilla so you don’t have to worry about the little guy.

Well, I hope that you are happy with the fact that you wanted to charge them $40.00 to set up a router. As soon as I can, I am going to move them to a Netgear router.

Sincerely NOT a Linksys reseller,
Tim Biden

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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