Kind of OT - Error when forwarding spam to Centurylink

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Wed Aug 21 14:15:29 UTC 2019


On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 4:10 PM Chris <chris.pollock1948 at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is probably pretty OT but I have to ask anyway just because the
> idiots at my ISP think the problem is because I'm running Linux and
> Evolution. Every time I try to forward a spam to their
> spam at centurylink.net address I get the attached screenshot. I ran this
> Evolution debug command - CAMEL_DEBUG=smtp evolution >& embarq.txt and
> the last line of the output reads to me that the issue is that their
> server thinks the spam I'm trying to report is spam, of course it is.
>
> [SMTP] Connecting to server smtp.embarqmail.com:25 from account
> 1414156398.2275.3 at localhost
> [SMTP] received: 220 smtp.centurylink.net ESMTP
>

I agree that it's doubtful that the problem is because you're using linux,
however "good luck" getting them to acknowledge that.

One thing that jumps right out -- does CenturyLink not offer a secure SMTP
connection? All of the email ISPs I have used for ... for more than ten
years ... restrict the use of port 25 and insecure SMTP, even from within
their own networks. Years ago it was a big issue because malware would camp
out on folks' PCs and spew spam via whatever SMTP server they could find.

However I would think that issue might prevent you from sending ANY email
via your CenturyLink account.

Look in your setup information (documentation at CenturyLink) for encrypted
SMTP connections and see if they offer any "three digit" port numbers
instead of 25. Looking through my various ISPs I see port 465 or 587 and
the specific secure protocol, such as SSL, TLS, STARTTLS, and the
authentication method their server expects.

You might also try a different email client such as Thunderbird, which in
recent years has become pretty good at negotiating the IMAP and SMTP
connections with the server without much intervention. It's been years
since I've used Evolution so I don't have recent experience with it.
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