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"Wouldn't it be better to cut off people with infected computers than to censor the internet?"

If they did that, it would lower their income and cut into their profits. Filtering outbound email costs less, at least in the short run and that's all the typical MBA is interested in. Their idea is to move to a new company before the long-term damage they've caused becomes evident. (I'm not just wanking, here; I asked an MBA about it once and that's what he told me.)

If an ISP doesn't filter their outgoing email to make sure that it's own users aren't spamming, they WILL get blocked. I'm on a super-secret anti-spam mailing list which I can't tell you about, and everybody there cheerfully admits to blocking their own users' outgoing spam. It's necessary.

Digging further into the Cox situation, the Cox subscriber said:

I tried to send an email. The email only contained text. The text Cox
objected to was "http://my_homebox_IP_number/"

I haven't checked the Cox TOS lately, but don't they prohibit running a home web server like all the other residential internet providers? Hasn't this been the case since for essentially the same length of time that the Internet has been a commercial venture?

They could do inline virus filtering easier, cheaper, and still not be intrusive. IMHO they are being rude when they could be helpful.

I will no longer be able to point to my home server on these lists because Cox
rejects such messages as spam. The message given when I try is:

Sending failed:
Could not write file The message content was not accepted.
The server responded: "ID_INTENTIONALLY_REMOVED This message was
undeliverable. This message has been found to be a potential spam message,
and has therefore been blocked. Please visit http://coxagainstspam.cox.net/ [cox.net]
for more information.".
Disk full.
The message will stay in the 'outbox' folder until you either fix the problem
(e.g. a broken address) or remove the message from the 'outbox' folder.
The following transport protocol was used:
smtp.east.cox.net

. . .

I could care less that their disk is stuffed and suspect it is misdirection.

This censorship is only a minor inconvenience but the message it sends is
ugly. It says, in so many words, that the internet is for your consumption
not participation. Changing messages to point to my physics page gets around
the immediate problem, but most people do not have such a thing nor should
they be forced to host things on someone else's computers. I'm paying for my
bandwith, why can't I use it for what I want? Finally, subscribers now know
that every word of every message sent is filtered. Will they filter my IM
conversations next?

It's not clear to me that Cox actually scanned the message body in its determination that the e-mail in question was spam. There could have been any number of indicators that caused Cox to reject the outbound message.

I also note that Cox's TOS specifically prohibits the hosting of servers:

Servers. You may not operate, or allow others to operate, servers of any type or any other device, equipment, and/or software providing server-like functionality in connection with the Service, unless expressly authorized by Cox.

A more accurate title for this story would be: "User in violation of Cox TOS upset over Cox efforts to enforce TOS."

My advice to said user? Buck up and get business-level service, or find yourself a real hosting service for your mail server.

I can understand and am sympathetic to ISPs who force outbound traffic to go through their servers. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I really do get what they're trying to accomplish. I also understand ISPs having spam filters on their outbounds, and think that's actually a pretty good idea. If you really need to send a virus so someone, then you should be technically competent to encrypt it or otherwise shield it from a scanner.

But never in a million years can I even remotely condone actually scanning the text of emails and rejecting ones an ISP doesn't like. That's just Evil.

Some antivirus packages also block some outbound email as well. At a previous company I worked for, we had to send out numerous survey invitations. Norton would quietly queue and scan all the outbound data (going to port 25)-- which worked in many cases. Except that it was slow. And there was now way of knowing how much data (if any) was still queued. And if the computer was restarted before Norton finished processing the queue, the data was silently lost (even though a "Accepted for delivery" message was returned to the sending program).

These limitations wouldn't be hit by your normal 1-or-2 emails at a time users. But for the rare legitimate high volume senders, like us, it was a problem. IT wouldn't let us turn off Norton alltogether (and rightly so, as we'd seen virii on our network in the past), and there was no way to selectively disable that "feature". Eventually we forced to make our outbound mail server listen on a different port, so that Norton wouldn't scan/lose the data.

At least with COX you get a notification saying that the message couldn't be sent, with Norton, the messages might just quietly disappear.

I would like to first state that I am a Cox cable internet subscriber in the Phoenix area. I also happen to wear the abuse desk hat for Arizona's oldest ISPs.

I can say without question that the amount of spam we get from cox is almost NIL. I constantly see spam coming out of Comscat's network, also Verizon and from time to time Time Warner but RARELY Cox. In fact I can't remember the last spam I received that originated from their network.

I don't mind that my egress SMTP port is blocked forcing me to use a MSA (mine is configured to use SMTP AUTH with TLS, which works nicely). The fact is that Cox has their act together in my opinion. The fact that they are a white hat in the abuse category makes me want to continue doing business with them. I don't think what you're seeing here is intentional censorship. It would actually be irresponsible for Cox not to filter outbound mail traffic, since they are bound to have customers that run malware infected / zombied host computers.

Anyway, I say "good job Cox" :)

P.S. I work for an ISP that is NOT Cox--which one might think after reading my glowing statements (in fact we compete against Cox)

I own part of a small ISP and CLEC in the South.
We do not use spy on our customers phone calls or throttle their P2P traffic. We are not considering monitoring their Internet traffic for copyrighted (or any other) data.
Maybe some of the big boys are out there using these draconian tactics, but your average, everyday, garden variety, small ISP is just trying to make a living providing a quality alternative to the behemoths out there.
Please don't lump us in with those guys.

All that said... We *do* filter inbound email traffic for viruses and SPAM. We do block inbound port 25 to our dynamic IPs.
We view these actions as our duty to our customers and to the rest of the Internet to do our small part to help at least slow down the rampant propagation of SPAM on the Internet.
We currently block about 95% of the email that hits our domains - and that number is slowly climbing. Do we occasionally throw out the baby with the bath water? Probably so, but it is rare. I can't even remember the last complaint we have gotten about this, so this tells me that our filters are highly effective.
As for blocking port 25, we do this to guard our address space against our own customers being irresponsible with their PC's and not keeping virus software up to date. Getting our address space blacklisted would effect ALL of our customers.

It is not about getting rich. Hardly so. Email is the probably the biggest drain on resources that any ISP faces. If we didn't take these steps, we probably would not be in business.

Everyone wishes we had the less evil Internet of yesteryear back, but it isn't going to happen. The Internet is a cesspool. We have to defend ourselves in the best way we know how.

About ten years ago, it became impossible for me to send e-mails to my girlfriend with the subject line "ILOVEYOU."

The error message from Comcast -- something about rejection -- was pretty classic.

In the Boston area, comcast fuckers are blocking port 25. So, even though people have legitimate uses for the internet connection they pay for, these companies are taking it on themselves to block standard connection protocols.

First its port 25, because of spam. Then it will be P2P because of copyright. Then it will be ssh because of terrorism. Then it will be, inspired from the new york story yesterday, filtering web content to prevent false alarms.

Fuckers. Bury your head america.

When people talk about fascist Germany, they focus on the extermination of jews and the holocaust, and while those were horrific acts, they are not what the Nazi party was about. They were the result of the acts of fanatical and arguably insane men who had gained power in the Nazi party, not the Nazi party, per se'

The Nazi party was about power and the exercise of it. It was about bringing pressure on the citizens from all aspects of society to conform to it. It used social structures and industries and laws to bring people under control. It is EXACTLY what is happening in america today. Its all the little things slowly picking away at the big things, until the big things crumble. Freedom of speech? Nope, now we have "free speech zones," where no one will hear you. I could go on, but the /. crowd already knows.

Just like the Reichstag fire in 1933, the world trade center in 2001 gave the neocons the ability to enact limits on freedom. After that, industries which were once regulated in order to protect the citizens are now deregulated and destroying citizens who do not conform, RIAA, MPIAA, walmart, etc.

ISP censorship is just one more piece of it. The internet is becoming the primary conduit of communication and fascist america must have its citizens controlled, just lake Nazi Germany needed its citizens controlled.

All this isn't a conspiracy theory either. No conspiracy theory need exist. Our government (of the people, by the people, bla bla) is supposed to protect us. If it stops protecting us from big companies, those companies will naturally do the work for their own gain.

Now everyone in the USA is afraid. Some of terrorists, some of losing heath care, some of losing their job, their house, what ever. Fear, as the nazi's will tell you is a powerful tool to harness.

Welcome to neocon amaerica where companies sue their customers because they can. Companies dictate what you can do with your property, because they can, and if you do anything about it or protest, you can lose your job which means your house and health care.

Sorry for the rant, but I can't be the only one who sees this whole thing in this way

According to the NANOG list (North American Network operators Group), Comcast has been discarding emails that include a link created using EasyURL [merit.edu], one of many services designed to provide shortened URLs for email links. This could be an anti-spam policy, as URL forwarding through these services is sometimes used by phishing scams to obscure the link's true destination.

I use an alternate-port SMTP service: my mail doesn't go through my ISP's server. That was after my outgoing mail got blocked and their customer service (I use the term loosely) people couldn't tell me why. I was just told that the problem should "correct itself" in a week or so. Well, it eventually did but by then I'd taken steps to never be in that position again. Now I just poll their mailbox for the occasional notification but I haven't sent a message through my ISP's SMTP server in years.

My IS fil ers my o -bound pac ets to many we ites. Ju t make it har er to re d wh t I wri e. I'm a re ly a go d spell er trust me.