BT: spam blacklist fix in place

BT is claiming it has fixed a problem that it was encountering with spam blacklist DSBL, which meant BT customers were getting emails bounced back, having been wrongly identified as spam.

Last week silicon.com exposed the problem which has been affecting some customers for up to a year.

The issue revolved around the Distributed Server Boycott List (DSBL) which provides a list of 'unsafe' servers - those which it claims are "dangerously misconfigured, insecure or abuseable" and expose people to spam through the use of open relay or other such means.

At the time BT claimed there was no problem with its servers and denied that its servers could be used for open relay - a way of sending email messages via a third party server, much favoured by spammers. However, anybody who referenced the DSBL blacklist in their anti-spam software or mail filtering configuration remained unable to receive email from a number of BT's business customers.

One such customer, Kevin Fiske, told silicon.com: "This has been going on for about a year now and it is an extreme irritant. It has caused us great embarrassment, particularly with one major client who saw the error notification and assumed we must be blacklisted because we have been spamming people, which obviously isn't the case."

BT Openworld today issued a statement to silicon.com which said: "With regards to the recent concerns raised by the blacklist provider Distributed Server Boycott List (DSBL), we are pleased to announce that a minor modification has been made to the BT Connect mail platform.

"This will alleviate DSBL's concerns regarding a perceived configuration error on the BT Connect mail platform. We have contacted DSBL to request removal of BT Connect from the blacklist and have been informed that this will happen within the next week. BT Connect customers have been informed of the modification."