IDT Blocks E-Mail from UK ISPs

A U.S.-based ISP decided to take drastic action against the .co.uk domain
level in order to halt an onslaught of spam, but is it prepared for the
consequences?

New Jersey-based IDT (IDTC) last week made its across-the-board decision to
embargo e-mail with the UK ending after the initial discover of spam
originating from the University of
Leeds.

After initiating several individual domain blocks, the ISP decided that
Britain in its entirety was culpable for the acts.

“Our systems dept noticed a very exessive amount of spam e-mail coming from
many domains ending with co.uk, so a block was put in place on individual
ones at first,” explained Jason Meyer of IDT’s Abuse Dept. “It continued,
[so] the block was put on everything ending with co.uk basically to protect
our users.”

Meyer said that IDT was simply following company policy to protect users
from spam attacks and to prevent equipment problems that might disrupt
e-mail access.

The block was kept in place for a couple of days, and then IDT received a
number of requests for the ban to be lifted. Meyer says that the block was
“lifted immediately” after receiving the customer feedback.

The University of Leeds told reporters that the spam was actually the
result of a security infiltration from outside the university.

The heavy handed ISP may find that it now has few friends in the UK, and
that many spammers know the company by name.