Posted: 30th May, 2007 By: MarkJ
Customers of ISP Tiscali UK have reportedly been without the ability to send e-mails (SMTP server) since as far back as Monday last week. The problem appears to have surfaced after the providers e-mail servers were abused to send bucket loads of SPAM (junk mail):
We are currently experiencing issues with outbound emails on our mail servers. This is not affecting all delivery addresses, some mail will continue to be delivered as normal, but some mail is being blocked by the receiving email servers.
Spam is a major issue for all ISPs and periodically all ISPs will be targeted by spammers. We unfortunately have currently fallen foul to such an attack and have been targeted by spammers using our service to send out spam, this in turn has meant other ISPs have taken measures to block mail being sent by Tiscali.
Our engineers are taking urgent action to block the spammers abusing our email service, this will progressively take effect over the next few days. We will post daily updates on the Service Status page and also within Forums until normal service is resumed.
In you are experiencing this problem and are not sure if your important mail is being received, we suggest that you temporarily use an alternative free email service.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
It's understood that the provider has now stopped the SPAM problem and is waiting for any blocks on its outbound mail to be lifted before service can return to normal. Unfortunately this could take several days and Tiscali has been unable to give an exact date.