Comcast blocking mail to its customers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> Date: October 14, 2008 1:45:19 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Comcast blocking mail to its customers
>
> I am a happy user of DynDNS's Mailhop BackupMX service.   Just got  
> the following related to Comcast's blocking of inbound mail from  
> DynDNS's Mailhop Forward service.  Wholesale blocking of all mail  
> intended for customers from a particular intermediate distributor,  
> merely because they route it through an external service that adds  
> value.
>
> While this doesn't affect me personally, it represents a "reach" on  
> the part of Comcast.  The "Mailhop Forward" service allows a user to  
> have mail directed to him personally at another domain (foo () bar com)  
> to be directed to his comcast.net mailbox.  As such it is like the  
> "forwarding" that I do with my MIT Media Lab mail to my "reed.com"  
> mailbox (hosted on a service provider).
>
> Comcast is, in this case, rejecting its own users' specific choice  
> of mail delivery path.   Do they plan to do this for other  
> forwarding services? What is the competitive rationale for blocking  
> supposed "spam" that the users have elected to receive (and  
> presumably delete once they determine they are, in fact, spam)?
>
> From a legal point of view: Spam is defined as  "unwanted commercial  
> email" - it is NOT "bulk" mail (bulk mail includes such things as  
> College Acceptance Letters to a whole class of accepted students).    
> Comcast's ability to determine "unwantedness" against its own  
> customers' expressed interests seems to be the overreaching issue  
> here.
>
> Did Comcast issue a statement to its users that warns them of this  
> tinkering with the mail addressed to them?
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> To:     dpreed () reed com
> Subject:        Comcast and MailHop Forward
> From:   DynDNS Lists <automailer () dyndns com>
> Date:   Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:23:14 -0400
>
>
>
> Dear DynDNS MailHop Forward Customer,
>
> As you may already know from our previous communications, our DynDNS
> MailHop Team has been working with Comcast over the past year to  
> better the
> quality of mail delivery to comcast.net email addresses from our  
> MailHop
> Forward system. The DynDNS MailHop system experiences regular  
> problems when
> trying to promptly delivery e-mail to comcast.net e-mail addresses  
> because
> Comcast believes that we are originating and sending comcast.net e- 
> mail
> addresses large amount of SPAM.
>
> This is simply not true, rather, MailHop Forward regularly receives  
> SPAM,
> which we scan with Spam Assassin to tag messages as such, and  
> depending
> upon customer preference, may forward to Comcast. Comcast, on the  
> other
> hand, ignores this tagging and believes that we are sending SPAM,  
> which
> leads to the eventual block of our servers.
>
> We have worked with Comcast to come to reasonable compromise on how to
> increase the reliability of e-mail delivery to comcast.net email  
> addresses,
> but have not reached a workable solution. For most DynDNS MailHop  
> Forward
> customers, we permit the customer to filter e-mail according to  
> their own
> needs. However, as an intermediate email forwarding provider,  
> ignoring our
> SPAM tagging efforts, Comcast's policy is to continue blocking our  
> mail
> servers on a regular basis.
>
> Because of the restrictions that Comcast has in place we are making a
> change to our MailHop Forward Service, which will affect only those
> addresses that forward to a comcast.net email address. As of  
> November 1st;
> any MailHop Forward email to a comcast.net email address will be SPAM
> tagged if the message is given a SpamAssassin score of 6 or higher,  
> and
> will be automatically discarded if given a score over 10. These new
> automatic settings will only apply to forwards to Comcast email  
> addresses;
> you will be able to customize settings for other forwards. By  
> reducing the
> amount of forwarded SPAM, we believe that our reliability of  
> delivery to
> comcast.net email addresses will significantly increase.
>
> For more information regarding this issue; see our page:
>
> http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/comcast_and_mailhop_forward.html
>
> If you have questions regarding this issue, we have created a forum  
> topic
> regarding this issue:
>
> http://dyndnscommunity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=904
>
> If you run into any trouble because of these hard coded settings on  
> our
> side; you can re-route your MailHop Forward alias to a non-Comcast  
> email
> address or contact Comcast directly at 1-800-COMCAST and encourage  
> them to
> reconsider their policies.
>
> Thank you, The DynDNS MailHop Team at Dynamic Network Services  
> Incorporated




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