Telewest E-mail goes south

If you're one of the nearly five million Telewest customers, there's a reasonable percentage your Email may have been unknowingly entered into the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) Blacklist recently, so writes an article on the BBC Website.

The block, which is affecting shy of one million addresses is due to an increasing number of Telewest home users PC's unwittingly being infected with worms and viruses. The obvious answer from organisations such as SPEWS is to simply cut them dead before they can continue to do any more damage.

In late April, Spews announced that it had started blocking more than 900,000 net addresses used by Telewest's Blueyonder broadband service. Many were suspected of being used by spammers.

In a statement Telewest said: "We are aware of the increase in e-mail volumes due to customers' PCs which have been infected by worms and viruses."

Telewest blamed recent virus outbreaks for the sudden rise in the number of hijacked home PCs.

It just goes to show how still how little the average home user is aware of the intrusions of others onto their computers and what silent brute-force tactics have to be put in place to prevent them doing further damage. The obvious downside to this of course, is how it affects Telewest customers who do adequately protect their system. How long before it's simply easier to blacklist the entire domain?

More information can be found on the BBC Website and you can discuss it on our forums.