Ring tells me the videos are stored securely on Amazon Web Services, and I hope they are. I wish it was possible to store recordings locally on a network attached storage box as well, although that would make remote viewing of them complicated.
A scan of the device showed encrypted traffic to the internet, but not to and from your Wi-Fi network. This is not really Ring's fault per se, it's more to do with how home wireless networks are designed and which should be fixed sooner rather than later.
As an alternative to a security camera and front door reception service, the Ring video doorbell works just fine. However, I wish it could do just one more thing: unlock the door when you want to let someone into the house, but are indisposed.
Maybe Ring should build a whole networked, smartphone operated front door automation system, with locks and motors that open and close the entrance and and... I should stop now.
Port 25 closed for email
After I wrote the column on net neutrality, emails arrived complaining that Spark appears to block traffic to email servers. In techie terms, this means traffic going via the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to servers that listen on port 25 won't make it through.
This is an inconvenience, but it's actually justified. It's not Spark's fault: you can thank idiot spammers for ruining a good thing for everyone, as always.
Ellie Cross from Spark confirmed that TCP port 25 is indeed blocked by default for all the provider's residential and business broadband connections.
There's a good reason for it, as Ellie explains:
"This is because while there are limited use cases for having the port open, the potential downside is very large.
This port uses an outdated form of SMTP connection that means the computers or devices using these connections are vulnerable and can be exploited to execute denial of service and spam attacks. Blocking port 25 by default helps protect our network and our customers. For this reason, it's standard and common security practice to block the port by providers all over the world," she said.
Internet email was designed to relay messages from one computer or server to another, until they reached their destination.
This is done with the open standard Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (abbreviated as SMTP above), which worked well in general, but was almost immediately abused by spammers to relay their rubbish to users.
Since then, things have become even worse, with spammers hijacking innocent users' computers with malware and joining thousands and thousands of them into botnets under their control.
Just like everything else on the internet of yore, SMTP sent user logins and transmitted emails in plain text, without encryption. That's quite simply unsafe in 2017.
One way to limit the damage spammers cause is to filter out traffic on port 25 from customers who don't operate mail servers, and that's what Spark is doing.
Providers are also using encryption, called Secure Sockets Layer or SSL, to ensure messages are delivered safely. Spark has set that up on port 465 for customers who want to send email via their servers; it can also be done on port 587 with other providers.
If you still need port 25 access, go to www.spark.co.nz/25 and fill in the form to request for it to be unblocked.
