FC: US company bans email from all .co.uk addresses -- spammers!

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[At one level this is pretty silly, and a likely example of an overzealous
23 year old sysadmin not having a clue about UK domains. But at another it
shows that problems can be fixed pretty quickly on both sides of the
Atlantic: The overbroad spam block gets lifted, and the UK university gives
the boot to the spammer. --DBM]

******

http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991030/newsstory12.html

Spam hits the fan

A NATION OF PORNOGRAPHERS and spammers. That was the view of Britain
apparently adopted by one of the biggest Internet service providers in the
US last week, as it decided to block all incoming e-mail from British
companies.

The action was taken by IDT, a New Jersey-based provider, in response to a
wave of unsolicited and offensive e-mails received by some of its
customers. "It was for massive spamming--pornographic material," an IDT
technician explained when asked why no British e-mail was getting through
to New Scientist's Washington DC office, which is an IDT customer.

Jason Meyer of IDT's Internet Abuse Department confirms that e-mail from
all addresses ending co.uk was blocked on 20 October. In addition, IDT
blocked all e-mail from the University of Leeds, after its customers were
spammed about a get-rich-quick scheme.

Internet service providers regularly block e-mail from known spammers.
These are individuals who send bulk e-mails to thousands of addresses.

But the scope of IDT's block is unusual. "To block all commercial traffic
from a major industrialised nation sounds clueless to me," says Jason
Catlett, president of the anti-spamming group Junkbusters, based in Green
Brook, New Jersey.

IDT has now relaxed its bans. The University of Leeds has traced its
problem to a security hole that allowed someone outside to use one of its
servers to relay spam.

Charles Seife, Washington DC



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