Tiscali chokes on spam

Tiscali’s UK internet operation has been targeted by spammers which have clogged the ISPs email servers, the company said Wednesday. According to the service provider’s status page, it has been suffering problems since Tuesday, which are restricting outbound email traffic. Problems look set to continue for the next week or so while the ISP puts countermeasures in place. “We have been targeted by spammers using our service, which in turn has meant other ISPs have taken measures to block mail sent by Tiscali,” the company said. “Some mail continues to be delivered as normal. However some mail is being blocked by the receiving email servers.”Tiscali said its engineers are taking “urgent action” to block spammers abusing the email service, by installing new hardware and updating spam filters.”This work will be complete today. It is likely to take 7-10 days for these changes to take effect across receiving email providers. During this period, customers will still find some sent emails delayed,” Tiscali said.The company must be having a bit of bad luck. Earlier this month anti spam service provider, ClearMyMail, released statistics on the top ten most spammed ISPs in the UK and Tiscali did not even feature. TalkTalk, Carphone Warehouse’s ‘free’ broadband offering and Force9, were the most spam targeted UK internet providers, according to the firm. However, the UK was found to be the second biggest culprit behind the US when it comes to generating spam.