Comments on: Comcast.net Deception

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:56:19 +0000

I received one of those Comcast emails this morning.. I've also encountered the same BS responses from them.. My gut feeling is that this is "BIG BROTHER" at work not, spam, dirty IP's or a virus etc etc. It's really ticking me off too! If I send 10 emails a day it's a heavy day for me. All of my Comcast buddies are still on port 25.

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:10:14 +0000

It would appear that comcast is trying to recycle a number of ip's that already have a bad reputation. I received a call last night from a dear elderly friend who had also received "the email" from Comcast. I went over, took their ip address and ran a blacklist check on it from DNSStuff.com. It had 3 listings. So being as their IP is dynamically assigned, I shutdown their computer and their modem. Waited an hour, had a nice visit and rebooted. Only to discover the IP did not change. I know this doesn't always work, but in the past it has been comcasts advice to their customers to follow that procedure, especially when they are challenged about giving out dirty dynamically assigned ip's. I contacted comcast in behalf of my friends and was met with abrasive rudeness to the point that they disconnected the call. When I called back I was put on hold (waited 45 minutes) and then hung up myself. Since I have 5 static business class IP's with them, I call the business "hotline" as they've been far more helpful in the past. They wouldn't touch the problem at all much less refer me to someone they might know in Comcast Customer Service dept. Without going into many other details, when I put them on port 587 their outgoing email was working once again.

Bottom line, check the reputation of the ip you've been assigned. Chances are it's already dirty and been used for spamming in the past. Now it's been assigned to you. As such it's triggering their internal email security and flagging an already crappy ip within their own system. Good luck in changing it. The only way around this that I know at this point is to comply with them or purchase a static ip.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:55:32 +0000

So instead of changing a simple port number that is a whole 3 numbers total you wasted all that time to give people a difficult time over something they had no control over….

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:52:00 +0000

Not sure if this is true in all cases but in my case they blocked port 25 due to too many bouncebacks. The trick, it would seem, is to keep your opt-in email lists squeaky “clean”.

Incidentally, I couldn’t agree more about the futility of blocking port 25. Do they really think that whoever is using that port for bad purposes can’t figure out how to switch to another port?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:33:00 +0000

I had this same issue with comcast. It’s the stupidest policy ever. Whats to say I don’t use port 587 now for all of the alleged spam/virus/whatever the #$*@#$ they think I have on my computer.

By: Rick Schummer

Rick Schummer — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:30:13 +0000

"Anonymous" the second, no one on this post or commenters made any reference to Comcast tech support being stupid. Abrupt, abrasive, and abusive, yes, but not stupid. If anything, Comcast is treating their customers as if they were stupid, by *deceiving* them about the virus.

I do tech support for my customers every day and it is not an easy job. So why is it that Comcast is putting in policies that make the tech support person be in a position of conflict with the customers? And all this is unnecessary by the way.

And oh by the way, if any ISP wants my business they better support me in connecting common applications to get email from their email servers. It is something that should be an automatic. Especially when they are the company moving to a non-standard port. Duh.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:07:00 +0000

first of all im glad you all think that the people who work for comcast are stupid..but they are not.. think aobut all the ignorent stupid people they have to talk to every day that think that having to change a stupid port in outlook (which comcast DOES NOT EVEN HAVE TO SUPPORT!!!) is so important.. GROW UP…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:25:00 +0000

I just went through the same thing with Comcast in Savnnah Ga. Outgoing mail worked fine until last night, but no go today 6/4/2008.
They do seem to have blocked port 25, but would not provide any information as to why they did so.
Our computers are heavily protected from a wide range of threats and scanned regularly so I am doubtful that we have a virus/worm.
However, i am logging all traffic through our router just in case and so far see nothing suspicious.
I believe Comcast is either blocking all port 25 traffic or blocked us do to something unknown (a report from a customer?) that caused them to flag our account. It would be nice if they could provide some clue as to WHY they blocked us so I could try to find/fix the problem, but they regard that info as secret or something.
I did get things working again by switching to port 587, but still wasted several hours with uncooperative,unhelpful Comcast tech support.

By: Andrew MacNeill

Andrew MacNeill — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Now that’s funny – I just got a call from my Cable provider in Canada with a “similar” message. Boy – these guys all travel in the same dark-lit circle , don’t they?

Here’s hoping I can get it dealt with before they decide to “deactivate” my account.