BT hits 'undo' on anti-spam email update

You've got FAIL

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 2nd April 2008 07:02 GMT

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BT has been forced to roll back changes it made to its rules on outgoing email addresses after they caused confusion for its broadband customers.

In March, the firm's Retail tentacle applied restrictions that meant customers who do not use an "@btinternet.com" address for outgoing mail must verify it to avoid a 553 SMTP error.

Obscure instructions on BTYahoo! co-branded pages made it frustrating for some customers to comply with the new regime. Others were angry that not enough warning was given.

BT has now decided to clarify the process before giving it another whirl. A statement released by the firm said:

The email security enhancements we introduced earlier this month, although only affecting a minority of our customers, had a greater impact than we had expected.
This is an important security enhancement needed to prevent spam and phishing abuse on the Internet however we rolled-back recent phases of this work as soon as we realised the impact it was having on customers and this will have cleared most of the recently-experienced 553 errors.

If you have use a different email address in the "From" field of your email client to that of your BT Yahoo! email address then it can still be used as long as the email address is not another BT or Yahoo! email address.

Got that? BT said it would try again "once we are satisfied the customer journey is as clear and simple as possible". Which is nice.

More here, courtesy of Thinkbroadband.com, including help if you're still having problems. ®

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