Not So SmartBro
In a previous post I brought up the issue of SmartBro apparently blocking outgoing SMTP connections to private SMTP servers. This is because they want to force their subscribers to make use of their SMTP server at smtp.smartbro.net. This is all fine and dandy, as long as your ISP’s network is reliable. And thousands of SmartBro subscribers already know how reliable SmartBro’s network is. Riiight.
So this morning, one of the things that I feared would happen had happened. smtp.smartbro.net was refusing connections to port 25.
Starting Nmap 4.20 ( http://insecure.org ) at 2007-10-24 11:54 PHT
Interesting ports on 203.84.191.215:
Not shown: 1695 filtered ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
8080/tcp open http-proxy
Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 39.880 seconds
What’s interesting here is that smtp.smartbro.net appears to be running a webserver and a HTTP proxy. See:
I had to resort to using a private SMTP server running SSL just to be able to send my emails. They are still blocking outgoing connections to port 25. Maybe in their zeal to block this port, they have misconfigured their firewall rules and blocked their own SMTP port. Amateurs.
Here’s to hoping that SmartBro never blocks the “other” standard SMTP port.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
smtp.smartbro.net was for working until three days ago when ut started refusing onnections. Tech support was no help. It is little comfort that I’m not alone with this problem. I am relieved that I am not going crazy. I called again today and it looks like no one has done anything about it. The support guy had me pinging the servers and telneting to port 25 which of course didn’t work as it didn’t three days before. I requested level 2 support but got ignored. Is everyone on smartbro using webmail?
October 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I normally use GMail. But I have several email accounts that I must attend to each day so I decided to just download all my GMail emails using POP and use a regular mail client. I guess that’s one of the benefits of using GMail, I have been insulated from having to deal with the idiots manning the tech support lines at SmartBro.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Hi Nimrod,
Many thanks for this post. For quite some time I had been using smtp.smartbro.net as outgoing smtp on Thunderbird — and today I noticed that I couldn’t use it to send outgoing mail using my domain’s email addresses.
Your post saved me, am now happily sending email via SSL using my own servers.
Glad to find another ubuntu user btw. Have just upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon via the upgrade option offered with the updates. Seems my old Toshiba is zipping along faster than when it was on Feisty.