[rtehfm]

Except when programs are designed for SSH to communicate on port 22. Security by obscurity is not good practice but other than that, yes, using a non standard SSH port will greatly reduce random drive by attempts.

[atmosx]

Just configure the localhost to route the ssh connections over a different port. Combined with ssh keys an becomes extremely convenient setup e.g.:

    ~> cat .ssh/config
    ControlMaster auto
    ControlPath /tmp/%r@%h:%p
    ControlPersist yes

    Host hostname1
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
     Hostname rem.hostname1.com
     Port 2290
     user user_name

Now you can things like:

    git clone ssh://username@hostname1/home/user/Code/repot.git

or

    scp file1.tar hostname1:/home/username && sftp hostname1

Which is pretty handy :-)

[tadfisher]

The proper method of dealing with programs like that is to fix them or use other programs.