Beware Mobile Dongle Outlook Issues!!!!

Following a sadly familiar merry-go-round affair between a customer and BT with regards to their business broadband, I advised them to purchase a cheap Mobile Broadband Dongle as a temporary measure so that one machine could connect to the company emails. They did this, and were very impressed when their emails (all 150 of them) began downloading.

With a well practiced "I fixed it no problem" smug walk off into the distance I returned to my office, and then received a call from the customer informing me that they could still receive emails fine, but could not send.

For some reason, the provider of this mobile dongle deems opening Port 25 (the default for sending mail from Outlook and most other mail clients) far too dangerous to allow. Thankfully, the first thing I tried was changing the port over to 587 (I will cover this in a later post) worked and the user got a 5 minute fix - and I got to do my smug walk again! However, if you use a Mobile Broadband Dongle for working while on the road, beware this little nasty, and make sure mail exits your Outbox!