Over the xmas holidays SBC decided to block outgoing traffic on port 25 (Simple Mail Relay Protocol), thus preventing users from being able to send mail, but still being able to receive mail. This is ironic, because while a large amount of zombie spam machines were rendered ineffective (unless they had a plan b) the users them selves get locked down just the same. These users will be able to read all about how they’re friends can’t wait to hear replies from them, little Johnny might be dying to hear back from them, but to no avail. They are stuck in a word in which information on flows to them, not from them. Oh the humanity!

I wonder how much pain and suffering could have been avoided by a mass mailing (dare I say spam?) to the users, explaining the simple steps to alleviate the situation. Hopefully SBC project managers are looking at this and trying to come up with better deployment plans. Maybe. Maybe they think it’s funny.