DigiPortal Software

Ports 25 and 110 are open

ChoiceMail One behaves as a server with respect to your email application. Therefore ChoiceMail One opens several ports as part of its normal operation. However, these ports only need to be accessible to your email client which is typically running on the same machine. In fact, although those ports show up as open, ChoiceMail is designed so that by default, it will only accept connections from the machine that is actually running ChoiceMail. In other words, you cannot actually connect to your PC through ports 25 or 110 from other machines unless you explicitly enable remote access from within ChoiceMail. Even if you do so, you can still control what remote machines are allowed to connect to ChoiceMail. More importantly, it is still not possible to use ChoiceMail's SMTP port (25) as an open relay as it requires authentication. If you are still concerned, and you want to prevent these ports from being seen by machines on the network, you have several options. Indeed, we highly recommend these options independently of whether you are using ChoiceMail One. 1) In general (and independently of ChoiceMail One), if you have a broadband connection, you should have a hardware firewall between your modem and your computer. A hardware firewall will block external access to these open ports by default. A number of companies make excellent hardware firewalls at very competitive prices - do a websearch to find one you like. 2) Whether you have a broadband or dialup connection, consider strongly installing a software firewall. A software firewall not only blocks you from external visibility but it also detects rogue programs on your machine that are trying to connect/send information without your knowledge. Most software firewalls will let you configure your system so that ports 25 and 110 are open to local applications but will make them inaccessible for external connections. TechNote Index