Internet spam cops threaten anti-spam vendor

Australian anti-spam vendor TotalBlock Pty Ltd has been threatened with a service shutdown by its Internet Service Provider (ISP) after being wrongly accused of sending spam.

"People Telecom emailed us to say they had received numerous reports of spam activity coming from our IP address," said TotalBlock Chairman Peter Stewart. "They threatened to suspend our service within 48 hours unless 'appropriate action is taken.'

The company relies on People Telecom for servicing its TotalBlock anti-spam solution, which protects small to medium sized enterprise (SME) customers both in Australia and overseas.

"The shutdown threat followed a ludicrous chain of events that hinged around SpamCop, an IronPort Systems Inc product that determines the origin of unwanted email and reports it to the relevant ISPs. The whole process was reminiscent of the Middle Ages witch hunts," said Stewart.

» iTWire - Stan Beer - 25-07-2006