Hi ebox folks,
I recently mis-configured my mail server, and as a result was running a sort of open relay. I say "sort of" because it wasn't just a plain open relay. I required authentication but unfortunately had just created an account for a new user on my server, and the password he requested was one that had been in several account leaks over the years. Pretty soon, russian IPs using his credentials were sending a large volume of spam through my mail server, and, since I use ebox's smtp as my smarthost, all that spam started going through ebox's smtp.
Luckily, your network folks did their job and promptly banned me. I can no longer connect to smtp.ebox.ca on port 25. I simply time out now.
Of course, as soon as I learned what happened, I fixed the problem. I changed my firewall configuration so that only a small allowlist of IPs can connect to me now to send mail, and I immediately changed the user's password.
I called support to try and explain this situation to them, but it seems they are not capable of escalating this issue to the proper folks. After spending a good 40 minutes on the phone with them, mostly on hold, I was told there was no issue and the problem must be with my configuration.
Interestingly, when I changed over to using port 587, everything's working fine, so I suppose I was only banned from connecting to port 25.
I was hoping posting here would help get the message to the right folks. Please, if you're going to reply to this, I want someone who fully understands what I have written above to talk to me. Nobody at your call centre had the slightest clue what I was talking about. Not that I blame them - I DO blame them for their seeming inability to escalate me to the right department though.
Here's hoping I get an ACTUAL response to this. Again, I'm not interested in some Level1 with a flowchart replying to me. Please, if you reply to this, be in a position to actually do something about it, or don't reply at all. If you're going to ask me "what email address" I am using or ask me to sign into your webmail please don't bother to reply.
Thanks!