Ian King blows Telus’s port-blocking racket wide open in the Feb. 24th Terminal City:
To protect themselves from attacks, high-speed users often put their machines behind a firewall that only allows certain types of Internet traffic through to their computer, blocking the rest. If they want to allow certain connections, they open the ports to incoming connection.
But Telus took that choice out of residential users’ hands when it began blocking selected ports–regardless of their customers’ security preferences–in May 2004.
The upshot: If you want to use your computer as a server – for multiplayer games, for chat, or even (gasp!) for file-sharing – you’d better either find another provider, or pony up an extra $60 or so a month for the Telus business package.
Truth is, I’m not too bothered by Telus doing this automatically. There are more than enough people out there who just want to get their e-mail, check out the sports scores, download video clips of Steve Ballmer jumping screaming across a stage, and then log out. They don’t know from open ports, and don’t want to… and why should they?
But as Ian points out, even if you’re some kind of geek superbrain with perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to use some port or other, Telus still won’t give you the option of opening those ports. You can upgrade, go elsewhere or suffer.
Me, I’m looking at door number two. More news tomorrow.
