The Reg picks up on Plus.net's email woes

Looks like The Reg has got wind of the current email problems..

Spammers stuff PlusNet email accounts (again)

New email platform fails to stop the rot

By Chris Williams

Published Tuesday 15th May 2007 10:38 GMT

Gaffe-prone ISP PlusNet has had its email database stolen and its users' accounts bombarded by spammers.

The attack first surfaced yesterday, when PlusNet punters reported that previously spam-free email addresses were being filled with unsolicited discount pharmacy marketing. Some forum posters report that a few of their webmail contacts have received more spam too.

In a statement, BT-owned PlusNet said: "It has come to our attention that a number of customer email addresses have been obtained illegally by a third party. We are in the process of contacting all affected customers in order to inform them of the incident and of any steps they need to take to ensure that their internet connections and computers are safe.

Read more here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/plusnet_spam_attack_may/

I wonder how much more troubles like this BT will put up with.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/plusnet_webmail_shut/

As posted elsewhere, but thought better to comment on this thread.


Armstrong pointed to a legacy of underinvestment at the firm, which it copped to earlier this year on its BT-backed relaunch. He said: "That has changed now and it's worth knowing that this is a new vulnerability in a piece of third party software."


IMO blaming the past doesn't help as many of the people who were saying trust me it will get better 6 months ago etc were wrong. They knew there was "underinvestment " but we were asked to trust them and judge in 6 months!
Some of these people are the ones saying again "judge us in 6 months time". How can anyone believe them this time?

Labour still at times blames the Torys for "underinvestment " and they been out of power 10 years. So how long will PN blame the "underinvestment" before BT bought them?

It's just Neil trying to cover his own mistakes. He's been just as involved in the mismanagement and marketing doublespeak which has caused these long term problems as anyone.

I wish for once they'd just come out and be straight about things. Even if they didn't come out and fully admit their shortcomings, trying to push the buck onto third parties is frankly appalling.

In reply to:

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He said: "That has changed now and it's worth knowing that this is a new vulnerability in a piece of third party software."

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A third party piece of software that they took and modified and have been unable to manage themselves, add much needed features, or keep secure. That's not the software's fault, it's not the third parties fault and it's certainly not customer's fault. It's the fault of a catalogue of bad management decisions.

And we were told that there would be no spin on this issue!

Where did they say that? I think it was customers asking for a no-spin explanation. It seems they were asking too much.

Linky to no spin

i don't use my pn email but have just received an email informing me about possible spam and should change my password. i've checked my pn email and there is spam there since 13th. is it really necessary to change my password?

cheers

Changing your password won't stop the spam and no passwords should have been leaked. It is just being suggested as a (sensible) precautionary measure.
Unfortunately the email being sent out (haven't received it yet myself but have seen a copy) doesn't quite fully explain what's happened and the extent of the email addresses that have been harvested.

Well, I've finally got my first piece of spam going to my email address that I had used for my alternative one to the Postmaster one.

It was from Fannie Lake and trying to sell me Adobe CS3.

Luckily my workplace uses Spam manager which seems to be doing a good job of filtering out the carp emails.