A couple weeks ago YahooBB Japan’s sendmail just stopped working for me. I have three domains and two computers on an ethernet network, and none of them could send mail, though incoming mail was unaffected. After using Gmail for awhile, I finally went and tracked down the problem, and found that YahooBB is blocking outgoing mail on port 25 for non-yahoo addresses.
Thanks for telling me, Yahoo!
Anyway, they call it OP25 for “Outbound Port25 Blocking” (Japanese FAQ) and they rolled it out over the year according to this schedule of irritation:
Checking the date for Kyoto Prefecture, I knew I had found my problem. Looking at the FAQ, I found that for YahooBB ADSL, I should change the outgoing port in Mac Mail from port 25 to port 587. Did that and it worked just fine.
Hopefully some of you Tokyoites will be able to find this info when the wave rolls over you on November 26.
4 comments
SaffronSaris says:
Nov 7, 2007
Hi Nils,
I just visited Kyoto end of last month, only for 2 days though, but I love love love Kyoto.
It’s a great place to live and travel.
Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to return for a longer time.
Jerry says:
Nov 8, 2007
AT&T/PacBell did this in the US a few years back. If I recall correctly, the default port for outbound POP mail is port 25, so that’s the port that spam bots use; blocking the port is supposed to trip them up. Since they ISPs don’t tell their users, though, this measure trips up more than the bots.
I’ve seen a lot of Japan-related and Japan-originating spam lately, so I’d imagine this is what’s going on.
京都 says:
Nov 21, 2007
I am Japanese.
I am interested in your article and enjoyed your blog�
Please keep it for us.
Thank you!
Gordon says:
Jan 9, 2008
Thanks for the tip.
I live in Kanazawa – sometimes known as “little Kyoto”, in Ishikawa prefecture and like you I lost the ability to send out emails at the end of October 2007 :-(
Looks like changing the port to 587 will fix it. Many thanks !!