PlusNet blasts email into blackhole (again)

Same as it ever was

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 23rd August 2007 12:54 GMT

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PlusNet, the terminally scatterbrained ISP, has permanently deleted customers' email again after it bungled the installation of an anti-spam appliance, it admitted this morning.

The Sheffield firm said it had blackholed about 10 per cent of the backlog of mail which built up yesterday daytime while its engineers worked on the appliance. The same proportion of legitimate mails between 5pm and 11pm was also wrongly earmarked and binned.

An update this morning said: "These mails will not be recoverable and we recommend customers who have not received email that was sent yesterday to ask the sender to re-send where possible." So, if you you were sent an email that you never received by an unknown person about an unknown subject, give them a bell and tell them to send it again.

The system is now working again, it adds.

We've lost count of the number of times we've had to write about PlusNet screwing up their email system in the last year, and imagine customers have lost patience. Let us know your questions for the company in our comments section.

PlusNet say they don't want to answer any of The Register's own questions, and instead emailed us a pre-prepared statement...fortunately we don't use their broadband service so it arrived, but adds nothing to the vague details they've got on their site here. ®

See what The Register's experts have to say on application security