My firm was called in to look at an issue with exchange server 2003. Comcast had shut down their out going email due to bulk mail. I logged into their server and found that there were 3 connection to there server one from Korea, one from Columbia, and 2 from Oregain. I killed the connections and proceeded to play with the Anonymous access settings. However when you turn off Anonymouse access it prevents the spammers, it allows the real client machines to send email, but they no longer can get email. I have been looking for a fix to this issue and i found this microsoft page that has this statment. "If the Anonymous access check box is not selected on your Internet gateway servers, you may not receive incoming mail from the Internet." http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995736(EXCHG.65).aspx What is the best answer to this issue?

If the Exchange Server accepts mail from the internet directly, you need anonymous access enabled, otherwise those connections will fail - external servers typically do not need to authenticate with you :) To ensure spammers can not relay anonymously, check out: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998094(EXCHG.65).aspx How to Verify Relay Restrictions on an SMTP Virtual Server You should disable authenticated relay as well if you dont require it. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895853 How to troubleshoot mail relay issues in Exchange Server 2003 and in Exchange 2000 Server ALso, run Exbpa against the server: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DBAB201F-4BEE-4943-AC22-E2DDBD258DF3&displaylang=en '