SMTP on the Go with CosmOTE?
For the last week or so I have been hindered to send mail in a far reaching result of the change all the SPAM brings to the Internet. For years now I have been running an SMTP server on my laptop, so when I am on the road I can send out mail without having to set up another outgoing mail server with each provider. This is a solution that requires some technical know how, but up to very recently it worked fine. But now I get more and more occasions where the dynamic IP I am connecting with to the Internet is being blacklisted -- either because it had been used to send SPAM (by someone else), or just because it is a dynamic IP.
I had the same problem with my server (which is on a dynamic IP). There I solved it using a smarthost setup to my providers mail server. Now on the PowerBook I would be ready to do the same thing... only there are some obstacles that I currently can't overcome. My first thought would be to declare my own server as smarthost. That way I would have more control over the route of my mails. But to do this, I would need to teach the Postfix mail server on the PowerBook to use SMTP AUTH. Getting SMTP AUTH out of Postfix requires a recompile, which requires Sourcecode and documentation. I won't pay for that through an expensive GPRS connection, so that choice is out till I get back to Athens.
The other option (and what I had done in previous, similar cases) is to set up the connection providers SMTP server as smarthost. Since I am connecting through one of their IPs, I should be implicitly authorized to send mail through their server. So no SMTP AUTH needed, nice. Just that I don't know where their server is. I did a quick net search for it, but turned up only other people searching the same information and naughts.
(BTW it sucks immensely when I'm searching for a solution to a problem I have, and up comes my own page -- not even on a really relevant page. Somehow this shows me soemthing like a big fat "nothing usefull found" banner.)
Some people suggest to use mailsrv.mycosmos.gr, but this rejects my outgoing mails. They do not seem to authenticate by IP. Either this is not the intended mailserver for GPRS customers (likely, from the name), or as some people suggest, you have to use this server always with SMTP AUTH. Which leaves me at the same spot. Asking the customer hotline is out of the question, I don't want to spend 2 hours listening to clueless drones. Besides, judging from the web search, someone already did that, without success. It is likely that there is noone within Cosmote who knows what a SMTP server is.
So if you happen to know the proper SMTP server for CosmOTE GPRS, I'd appreciate a comment or a mail. Not that I have any hopes. Until that time I'd say: Thank you CosmOTE for making it so hard. With the few Cents you get for your GPRS connection you certainly can't be bothered to give out a little bit of information or to set up a proper SMTP server.