Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Texas Gas Price & AT & T U-Verse Email Sending Problem

I thought the installation of my new AT & T Internet/TV system had been successful. So, I took off, unaware I was leaving an email problem behind.

On the way to my destination I needed gas. Yesterday I'd seen it at $2.57. There was a long line to save a few cents on a few gallons of gas. So, today I paid a bit more, but had no line. I think it was $2.65.

As my faithful readers know, when I get gas I call my Mom and Dad. Usually my Mom answers. Today it was Dad. We talked for a long time. Dad hears well when he's on the phone. I don't think my Mom and Dad have heard from my little sister in awhile. I fear they feel she's ignoring them. I mentioned that she's real busy taking care of Little Evie. I try to call Mom and Dad at least once a week. I'm what you call the stereotypical perfect son that most Mom's and Dad's dream they'd have.

I got back here and checked email. I had an email that required a reply. But I could not send. With Charter this was never a problem, but near as I can tell, AT & T is in some deal with the devil known as Yahoo and somehow their email is entwined like some demon marriage that produces evil spawn.

I Googled for help. I am not alone. I think AT & T and Yahoo want to make it difficult so you'll use the Yahoo email program and thus be exposed to ads. I, in my innocent, ignorant naivete, thought that AT & T was a legit ISP, that they were just my broadband portal to the Internet. I didn't realize they also were going to play the role of Internet Spam Nanny Cop.

That's what I read more than once. The send blocking is intended to filter spam. I can go through some bizarrely byzantine process to validate up to 10 non-Yahoo email addresses from which I would be allowed to send email via the AT & T/Yahoo connection.

Why was I not informed of this? Does anyone have a solution? Besides begging Charter for forgiveness. But I like the TV part of this deal.

3 comments:

Gar said...

Don't use smtp.att.yahoo.com to send your emails. Use mail.durangotexas.com or something of that nature. Normally web hosting services also offer an smtp address for sending mail.
A lot of people (I used to) block mail from Yahoo because of the amount of junk you get from Yahoo.

Durango said...

It's more complex than that. ATT and Yahoo use some block port 25 thing. You're supposed to go thru port 465. But just switching it from 25 to 465 doesn't work. When I'm up in WA and using Comcast I don't do a thing and my email works normal. With this ATT thing I can receive, but not send. It's very vexing. Their website help is useless and confusing.

Gar said...

If you can configure your mail server to use a different port that might work. I don't know how much control your hosting service allows. It seems like my service will let me designate a different port for my outgoing mail.

It seems kind of short sited for them to simply block port 25, but that does cut down on a lot of people using SPAM scripts. I doubt they will be able to make an exception for one person.

You might be screwed. I only know one other person with U-Verse and they access their email through a webmail client so it doesn't count.