1 [[!meta title="Comcast rediculousness"]]
2 [[!meta date="2008-09-02 16:19:43"]]
4 I recently paid a phone bill online for [[Comcast]], and in order to
5 do so I needed to set up a Comcast email account. While browsing
6 through their documentation trying to locate an IMAP server, I ran
7 across [this priceless gem][FAQ]:
9 Error #1 - Port 25. Secure (SSL); no Socket Error: 10053. Error Number 0x800CC0F.
11 This error indicates that your port 25 has been blocked. Comcast has
12 determined that your computer has been infected with a virus and has
13 been used to send out spam, liekly without your knowledge. By closing
14 this port, we've taken steps to protect your computer from being used
17 How can I send email again?
19 If you would like to send email through Outlook Express, you can click
20 here to access a simple to use, one-click fix, which will upgrade
21 Outlook Express to send email through alternate port 587.
23 Your computer has a virus spewing junk to port 25? No problem, simply
24 move your activities somewhere else :p. You would have though maybe
25 links to anti-virus software, since I suppose linking [here][Ubuntu]
26 is probably to complicated for Comcast to handle ;).
28 Sadly Comcast doesn't support IMAPS:
30 William_(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:03:01 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
31 I was wondering if there is an IMAPS server
33 Romeo.25655(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:03:39 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
34 William, Comcast supports POP server only.
36 William_(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:03:54 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
37 are there IMAP plans for the future?
39 Romeo.25655(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:04:33 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
40 I am not certain about that, William.
42 William_(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:04:52 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
43 Is there someone else I should ask?
45 Romeo.25655(Tue Sep 02 2008 11:06:25 GMT-0400 (EDT))>
46 At this time, the only server that we sure for our email is POP. There
47 is no plans to use IMAP.
49 After some googling about, I found out how to setup [[Mutt]] to not
50 delete messages it downloads from a POP server, and got Comcast
51 working through Mutt. I was uncertain about the encryption, since
52 Mutt fails on its first few authentication attempts, so I tcpdumped
55 # tcpdump -A > /tmp/dump
57 and grepped through the output for my username and password. No
58 matches, so apparently `pops` in the server name is sufficient for
59 hiding the authentication.
61 I put the Comcast information in a new file:
66 # Comcast mail server addresses from
67 # http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?Id=2165
69 # http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?ID=2288
70 # email server location
71 set spoolfile=pops://<comcast-username>@mail.comcast.net:110/INBOX
72 set folder=pops://<comcast-username>@mail.comcast.net:110/
74 # gmail does this automatically
77 # use msmtp to send outgoing mail to the mailserver
78 # see ~/.msmtp for configuration
79 set sendmail="/usr/local/bin/msmtp -a gmail"
81 set from="<gmail-username>@gmail.com"
84 set pop_checkinterval="600"
86 and added Comcast entries to my main Mutt configuration:
89 mailboxes imaps://<drexel-username>@imap.mail.drexel.edu imaps://<gmail-username>@gmail.com@imap.gmail.com pops://<comcast-username>@mail.comcast.net
91 account-hook pops://<comcast-username>@mail.comcast.net \
92 'set pop_user=<comcast-username> pop_pass="<comcast-password>"'
93 folder-hook imaps://<comcast-username>@imap.comcast.net 'source ~/.mutt/comcast'
95 [FAQ]: http://www.comcast.com/customers/faq/FaqDetails.ashx?Id=4394)
96 [Ubuntu]: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/i386/index.html