Anti-spam group the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS)
has blacklisted almost one million e-mail addresses belonging to
Telewest, limiting its broadband customers' ability to send e-mail,
according to reports.
SPEWS claims that many of the addresses are used by home
computer owners who are unaware that their machines have been
hijacked and are being used to churn out spam.
Taken together these exploited PCs form a network of bots (short
for robot), and are used to increase the speed and breadth of spam
attacks.
SPEWS, set up by a group of anti-spam activists, contains a list
of known spammers and spam operations, which is used by ISPs and
other companies to identify and block incoming spam.
According to the
BBC
, over 900,000 customer
addresses owned by Telewest's Blueyonder broadband service have now
been placed on the list.
The cable company is now working to help those customers clean
their computers, and to strengthen its network security systems,
says the report.
