Posted: 05th Jan, 2007 By: MarkJ
One of our readers (Brian) pointed out that several Carphone Warehouse owned ISP's (TalkTalk, OneTel etc.) have been blocking BT email addresses. OneTel has confirmed the problem, blaming it on abuse of BT's mail system:
Thank you for your email.
The reason why you are having difficulty receiving email is due to security settings that have been put in place by some ISP's (e.g. Onetel, TalkTalk) to protect the integrity of their servers during attacks on them over the festive period from BTInternet addresses.
Onetel are working to have this issue resolved as soon as possible.
I offer my apologises on behalf of Onetel.
Details of precisely what took place are not known, although ISPs do occasionally place temporary blocks on rival provider addresses when open relay mail servers are abused to send SPAM or malicious software.
Such blocks are normally removed after a few days, although we have no idea how long this particular issue has been going on.