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Spam Blacklist Targets Hijacked Telewest Customers

Posted by timothy on from the spammers-should-be-hung-by-their-thumbs dept.

davidmcg writes "BBC.co.uk reports that UK cable firm Telewest has had almost one million email address blacklisted by an anti-spam firm. The Spam Prevention Early Warning System blacklisted the email addresses because a large number of the machines using them have been hijacked by spammers. Telewest have stated that they knew about the problem and have been working with customers to regain control of their machines."

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Spam prevention good for me. by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think maybe spam is overrated.. with the right technology in place, it can be defeated. Although indiscriminite blacklisting by Orbs or whoever doesn't really help the situation :(

    Overreated? You have lots of people working on solving the spam problem for you. LOTS of effort goes into maintaining those blacklists your provider uses to provide an acceptable spam level for you, and you find it meets your needs.

    The only reason you think it might be overrrated is that you are not realizing what an effort is being put forth for you.

    --
    .
  2. Email Addresses? by Underholdning · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spews doesn't block email addresses. As a matter of fact, they don't block anything. Spews is a database of IP addresses.

    --
    Underholdning.info
  3. Re:Hmph by aug24 · · Score: 4, Informative
    many isps block smtp or redirect port 25 to their own smarthosts

    This is true... my UK ISP, Nildram, simply blocks port 25 outbound for all machines unless certain conditions are met. Very few home users will have any need for this as they will use Nildram's mail server outbound, so only compromised machines which already run smtp services (and have previously passed the open proxy test) can become an issue - a tiny proportion.

    With simple solutions like these, this should be a non-newsworthy item. However, with useless bastards like TeleWest not bothering to do this and permitting unfettered port 25 outbound, it is newsworthy, if only for name-and-shame reasons. Assuming you live in the UK and give a shit, of course ;-)

    J.

    --
    You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
  4. Should point out.... by Tehrasha · · Score: 5, Informative
    ..that no email addresses have been blacklisted.

    Telewest has had almost one million email address blacklisted by an anti-spam firm.

    SPEWS does not block email addresses, it lists IP addresses. Its up to admins who use SPEWS to decide whether or not to use the listing to block email coming from those IPs.

    If the users in those affected IPs use a legitimate email server, they can still send email to their hearts content. Only people running their own mail servers and direct-to-mx traffic would be affected.

  5. Re:Is blocking port 25 really useful? by Stephen+Williams · · Score: 4, Informative

    is it the fact that it has to send *to* port 25 that's getting blocked?

    Yeah, that's right. The source port is irrelevant.

    -Stephen