Onetel - Spam Attack Results in Missing E-mails

A large spam attack through the main server of the telecommunications company Onetel has completely disrupted the e-mail services of the European firm.

In August 2007, spammers launched a computer attack on Onetel, a company under the ownership of Carphone Warehouse in London, by hijacking its server and using it to distribute huge number of spam mails among its customers, according to a press release. Earthtimes.org published it on September 5, 2007.

Onetel's e-mail services have collapsed since the illegal act. E-mails of thousands of customers are missing from the company's computer network. Many of the customers are angry about the state of the e-mail service and are demanding compensation, claiming that they are losing business as the problem continues.

An Onetel customer, whose work largely depends on e-mails, said that he had been calling the people at the company who keep saying that engineers are working on the issue and that the problem would be all right soon. But the day passes without any change, the customer complained, according to Telegraph.co's news on September 6, 2007.

He said he was heavily dependent on e-mails, and feared to think about the amount of business he was losing, as e-mails weren't getting through. It was a totally disastrous situation.

About 60 Onetel customers worldwide having similar stories reported to Daily Telegraph while several others expressed their frustrations through online message boards.

Chief Executive Officer of Carphone Warehouse telecom division, David Goldie, said that he felt some hackers engaged in spamming and often involved in organized crime were trying to reach their computer systems. Telegraph.co reported this on September 6, 2007.

Another problem compounded the original one when the outgoing spam mails that the ISPs identified bounced back, according to Goldie.

He further added that around one-third out of 30,000 email customers of Onetel have active mail accounts and majority of the affected people should get the compensation.

Last year in 2006, Onetel's customers bombarded the financial Website 'thisismoney' with complaints about apparent technical problems and payments they had to make for unworkable services. In response to that, the company, which was shocked at receiving such volumes of complaints, assured of better services.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/21/2007