Are the British a nation of pornographers and spammers? New Jersey-based Internet service provider IDT apparently thinks so - they blocked all incoming e-mail from British companies, in response to a wave of unsolicited and offensive e-mail received by some of its American customers.
"It was for massive spamming - pornographic material," says the company, when asked why no British e-mail was going through to New Scientist's offices in Washington, D.C.
IDT Internet Abuse Department spokesman Jason Meyer says all e-mail from addresses ending in co.uk was blocked October 20 and from the University of Leeds, after customers complained about being spammed for a get-rich-quick scheme.
IDT has since eased the ban. The University of Leeds says its problem sprang from a security breach that let someone outside use one of its servers to transmit spam.
ISPs block e-mail from known spammers regularly, but the breadth of the IDT block is considered unusual. At least one anti-spamming group - Junkbusters - says blocking all commercial e-mail traffic from a major industrial nation is "clueless".
