Xtra offer a product called 'Secure Remote Email' which is an alternative for roaming customers. SSL, and works regardless of the ISP you're on.
Is good to know for customer reference. Telstra Clear offers this already and i didnt know that Xtra do. Cool.
They have done for ~2 years or longer.
Noted that Xtra have stated that people who want to be excluded from the block need only ask.
Yep :) - have you seen what they want you to agree to for this?
Tell them your AV software Tell them your firewall software State the reason for doing it Tell them your mail server software
Agree to terms and conditions including that you will keep your AV and firewall software up to date at all times.
This sounds like typical companyspeak for "we want to opt out of being responsible for any virus traffic originating from your network, so we make it clear that you are in fact responsible". And theyre actually requiring some responsible behavior from their clients. Realising that for 99% of their customers the restriction wont cause any problems - and for a substantial proportion of the remainder (windows users) the need to actually make clear that you're taking responsibility is not really that unreasonable. At the very least, the info goes on file, so that if theres a problem later on, Xtra can very pointedly say 'you agreed to keep your system up to date and secure'. So its not necessarily the nicest situation, I admitt, but I can't say i'm hugely suprised. One just has to hope theres some cloo being used to administer this. Oh, and for the foolish person who 'CBF' finding out whether the opt-out costed anything or not - its already been stated in various press releases, etc, that the opt-out will not cost anything.
I had a thought that it would be quite a good idea for service providers to be able to apply to XTRA to get there servers excluded from the list. Haven't thought about the practically or legal issues here - of which there are many!
Huh? Xtra's policy affects their customers only. How does this indicate a need for other providers to be excluded - when the policy doesnt affect them? Going back to the original question, however - I am interested to hear if any other ISPs are considering implementing a similar policy; I'll likewise be interested to hear exactly what sort of volume-impacts are noted once the block is implemented. Mark.