May 22, 2003
Having E-Mail Problems?
Effective 5/22/03, the Article 1, Section 3 of RCN's Internet Access Agreement is revised to specifically allow RCN to configure its network devices to restrict, deny or otherwise limit access to particular ports and internet protocols. RCN published this modification to the Agreement in order to notify customers that RCN is implementing port 25 blocking. The change will be transparent to most RCN internet access users. The effect of this modification is that only high speed access customers with static IPs will be able to send e-mail directly from their local systems to the internet at large. Other high speed access customers that formerly enjoyed the ability to send e-mail directly from their local systems now will be required to send e-mail through RCN mail servers.
The changes described in this notice are necessary to address the increasing security problem whereby third parties are exploiting RCN high access users with open proxy servers or trojan/backdoor malware on their systems, and effectively hijacking these connections to the RCN network in order to transmit "spam" and other unsolicited and/or abusive e-mail traffic to other networks and the Internet at-large. Other Internet Service Providers are responding to this abuse by blocking all e-mail traffic originating from RCN's network, disturbing the flow of e-mail traffic of RCN's entire user base.
Please be assured that port 25 blocking will not affect mail sent directly through RCN mail servers nor will it affect high speed access users with static IP service. If you are a standard high speed access user who has been affected by the port 25 blocking and require the ability to send e-mail directly through servers other than RCN's e-mail servers, you should consider upgrading to RCN's static IP service. Not only will static IP service allow you to send e-mail directly from your local system, but RCN has opened port 80 for static IP users. The opening of port 80 will enable high speed access users with static IP service to host webservers with their connection to the RCN network. Call 1-800-RING-RCN to order your static IP service today.
Last modified: 2003-08-20