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Security The Internet

ISP Closes Webmail After Spammers Get Addresses 142

Posted by CowboyNeal from the simplest-solutions dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Error prone British ISP PlusNet, who you might remember for accidentally deleting 700GB of customer's e-mail last year, have done it again with a major security gaffe. Their webmail service was compromised this week, and spammers got hold of customers' e-mail addresses who they've been happily spamming away ever since. They've since made the decision to close their webmail service, in the ultimate admission of incompetence for the now BT owned ISP. In an e-mail to their customers, Network director Phil Webb goes on to recommend that their customers install security software, along with telling them that they shouldn't call up to complain. One might suggest that they need to practice what they preach."
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ISP Closes Webmail After Spammers Get Addresses More

ISP Closes Webmail After Spammers Get Addresses

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  • Erm ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mewt ( 1057562 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:29AM (#19190559) Homepage
    Oh well who needs email anyway ?

  • Not surprising (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zelos ( 1050172 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:35AM (#19190579)
    Not all that surprising, this is a company whose account password policy is 5-8 characters, all lower case, no non-alphanumeric characters. I've been with plus.net for ages, they seemed fantastic after my truly awful experiences with Demon, but they've been much worse recently - they broke routing recently so that I couldn't connect to my work VPN for days. Anybody recommend any other decent UK ISPs? I hear good things about Pipex.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by russasaurusRex ( 966807 )
      Recommend another ISP? Sure. I've used Freedom2Surf for just over 4 years now and haven't had a problem with them once.
    • Zen or Claranet

      Both have decent news feeds too.
      • Since I left Metronet (after they got bought by PlusNet!), I've been with both IDNet [idnet.net] and NewNet [newnet.co.uk] both of which are brilliant. Neither is expensive, and both provide problem free broadband without any port blocking or "traffic shaping". I would strongly recommend either!
      • I'm off to Zen, I requested my MAC (code needed for an ADSL transfer) last night. They're stalling at the moment, trying to get me to move to a new product, but after seeing their service gradually go down the toilet without a corresponding drop in my rental, I decided enough was enough.

        It's a shame, because a few years back when I joined them they were an excellent "techie" ISP...but then the binary newsgroups were dropped, next the traffic shaping started (so they could reserve bandwidth for their VoIP

        • FWIW, I shifted to Zen when I left Plus a few months ago, with a very similar story to yours. Aside from a few teething troubles getting it set up, most of which turned out to be BT's fault rather than Zen's, the technical service has been fine.

          The customer service at Zen is appalling, however. They don't have a 24-hour tech support number, for one thing, so there is no "quiet" time to call. After sitting on hold for 45 minutes during one of those teething troubles, my first question of the technical advi

    • I tried Pipex and was unimpressed, among several UK hosts. Still, they did come through on their 30-day money back guarantee, and on the last day possible even.

      I had a client that *required* a use a host within the UK and I never did manage. It was a nightmare. In the U.S. I use Dreamhost http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?134994 [dreamhost.com] in L.A., Even though I'm in Amsterdam using Drupal which requires much server interaction, I'm very pleased with my subscription for nearly 2 years already. I've seen and heard of simi
      • Tryin to scam a referral bonus outta slashdot readers? Meh.

        You'd have more credibility if you were pimping out a higher quality host. DH oversells their capacity, and is about average for bargain basement junk. I tried their $10/yr promo a while back to run a small image g2 gallery. I'd say it wasn't worth $10. Their MySQL server was unreliable (lots of downtime), the httpd server I was on was quite slow, and even after canceling the account I get spam from them.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by SpzToid ( 869795 )
          All the same, I use them because I have yet to find better. So I recommend them too. This is what I use, it is the best I have found so far. I've got a few dozen sites, more configurations than trafficked sites, but I'm pleased given my purposes and hours spent interacting with the servers myself; and the whole package. I'm trying to figure out how to make best use of their subversion component this weekend, as a matter of fact. Splendid, IMHO.

          So in my defense, I claim no scam.

          but this is off-topic. I'm sti

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Gossi ( 731861 )
        I use United Hosting, which is based in the UK, with UK servers. Have done for years. No problems. They're really good. No Windows hosting, though.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Kryis ( 947024 )
      When I have a say in the matter, I tend to use Zen. They may be slightly more expensive than most, but on the few occasions that I have had to contact support, they have been very helpful. I will be switching my family to Zen from Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange/Whatever they call themselves now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      Just how many invalid login attempts do you think they allow? I'm sure that foolish customers getting separated from their passwords by malware or stupidity is a much larger concern for them than brute force attacks.
    • Even though I am in the US, when ever I hear of Pipex I can think of only one thing:

      THE HOFF - King of the Internet

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jphpzjar2y4 [youtube.com]
    • Anyone remember when Demon used to be good? I'm talking about 15 years ago now at the dawn of the internet, one of their selling points was their usenet news server (the newsborg!), when they were a small company and close to their customers. They've never been the same since they were bought up by Thus.

      I keep my Demon account open purely because I have used the TAM account for a long, long time and a large number of people know that as my contact email. Recently they wrote to me to say I hadn't paid for

    • Try Andrews and Arnold (Score:2, Informative)

      by gentry ( 17384 )
      Andrews & Arnold ( http://www.aaisp.net.uk/ [aaisp.net.uk]) have been excellent for me. IPv6, as many IPs as you need, excellent customer service, free domain with a standard ADSL account, unlimited downloads in the evening, IMAP/POP/webmail access with antispam & virus. I've been with them for a few months now and they have been by far the best ISP I have come across in the UK. They do limit usage during the day (I'm on 1GB a month during 0800-1800 Mon-Fri), but over usage is charged in small increments, should yo
    • I've been using Zetnet since 1995 (www.zetnet.com). They used to be Shetland based, but moved to Manchester in a buy out a few years back. They are very much a small independent ISP undoubtably reselling feeds from another company and with that you get the positives and negatives. On the positive side their techies - of which they only have a few - are available by IRC as well as phone and email and they're more than happy to go the extra mile with you. If you like being on first name terms with your su

    • I was with Plus for many years, but their service deteriorated dramatically around a year to 18 months ago.

      At the time, they made it unreasonably difficult to get a transfer authorisation for my BT line to move to another ADSL ISP, and the rules requiring all ISPs to give transfer authorisations within a reasonable time hadn't yet come into force, so I would have lost connection for probably a month during the move. Since I knew I would be moving house fairly soon, I put up with them until then, when I co

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by glesga_kiss ( 596639 )
      If you live in a Virgin (NTL) area, I'd recommend their connection. I've had it for 6+ years, very few outages. Got the 10 meg one at the moment, get full speed whenever the remote site allows.
    • Tesco I was with tesco broadband there was no fair usuage policy, I got (on my 512kbps line) a constant 50Kb download and always had a good (very low latency.) I am waiting to go back to them their doing a great deal for £24.95 of unlimited (and they actually mean unlimited) broadband which goes at the rate your line can provide (8Mbps for me.)
      Currently I'm with Tiscali, 5GB is what they actually mean (you get FUP'd here) latency is often 180ms and above and between 16:30 and 23:30 they shut down all
    • Pipex were excellent up until about 18 months ago. Then they started enforcing FUP conditions, and crippled torrent traffic 24 hours a day. A couple of months ago, they started kicking off people using 'excessive' bandwidth if they didn't agree to very restrictive new FUP conditions.

      Now, they're filtering all encrypted traffic to catch the RC4-based torrent encryption to 30KB/s - on an 8Mbs line. They won't even tell people what the limits are, though it's reckoned to be no more than 30-40GB a month.

      They al

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by easyTree ( 1042254 )
        Then there's this (I shit you not) - please bear in mind that I'm not a Pipex customer, nor have I been during the last *five years*:

        --
        Dear Sir or Madam

        You may have noticed that we have not fully charged you for your Pipex services to date. This means your account has an outstanding balance of £46.88, which we plan to take payment for through debiting your credit card on or around 25th May 2007.

        We're really sorry for this mistake, which was caused by a problem with our internal systems not identifying
    • Also, when I was a customer, I would ring on some tech support issue and they would *tell me* (or anyone pretending to be me) my password. Not only is it stored in clear text. Not only does some arbitrary low-level tech support guy have access to it but they *tell you* if you ask, lol. I tried emailing them to suggest that this was foolish but these met with the email equivalent of the blank stare from someone who knows they're correct.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cato ( 8296 )
      I use Andrews and Arnold - http://www.aaisp.net.uk/ [aaisp.net.uk]. They give you 8-16 static IPv4 addresses for free, support IPv6 out of the box, are very reliable, and even text (SMS) me when the line goes down. They have lots of latency and loss tracking web reports, and online fault tracking, status blog, etc. Their techie-oriented page mentions some more nice features: URL:http://www.aaisp.net.uk/tech.html.

      Most importantly, you can get through to a real techie in about 30 seconds typically if you have a real prob

  • Waiter, Can I have the bill please? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:36AM (#19190587) Homepage
    Honestly, if this happened to me, not only would I feel it my right to complain but to also seek out a new ISP.

    Nothing completely short of complete incompetence!

    • I totally agree with you - it is IMHO totally irresponsible ISP.

    • Re:I'm one of the victims... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've been with PlusNet a long time, they used to be excellent, however as has been observed their service is NOT what it was and is getting worse.. Thanks to their incompetence I am now getting dozens of SPAMs each day on an account that never got any (I keep it to friends and family). All the family have had to turn on SPAM filters for their accounts, and yes that was and is possible if you watch who you give email addresses to.

      This time PlusNet waited days to tell us what had happened. (I assumed a close
      • Instead of blaming PlusNet, why don't you blame the criminal spammers who are assaulting your e-mail account? We seem to acquire this apathetic attitude towards spam as if there's nothing we can do about it... it's just a fact of life that half our e-mail or more is going to be garbage. Why do people accept this?

      • They are obsessed with pushing you to use their Website rather than calling them.

        Seems so appropriate [sheldoncomics.com]

  • They sent an email to their customers?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:37AM (#19190603) Homepage
    Their webmail service was compromised this week, and spammers got hold of customers' e-mail addresses who they've been happily spamming away ever since. They've since made the decision to close their webmail service, in the ultimate admission of incompetence for the now BT owned ISP. In an e-mail to their customers...

    It's unlikely they'll actually be able to read this email given the fact that they're now drowning in spam...
    • I've actually had more emails from Plusnet apologising and informing of the availability or non-availability of webmail and other services than have had spam from Plusnet (11 spam emails since last weekend). I'm feeling somewhat left out!

  • Lost emails (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperGT ( 1104423 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:40AM (#19190617)
    I always worry about this. I use my gmail account as a sort of backup, just in case my laptop decides to fail. And I also keep loads of emails there with important information I may need later. I treat it as my safety net, but what if this was to happen? I understand that google and this ISP are probably years apart (as far as security and technology), but it still makes you wonder. Now I feel like making a backup on a thumbdrive, saving it on a dvd-r, etc.
    • That is exatly the problem I had a year ago. The solution - get a cheap box, put Linux on it and install IMAP server.
      • If you were seriously worried, I'd be going a little more expensive and getting some RAID into that... just felt the addition was necessary.
    • Google is all about redundancy. We hear these kinds of stories a lot but they don't actually happen to many companies at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mce ( 509 )

      This is why I don't leave any mail on my ISP's server. Everything gets downloaded to my home desktop as soon as possible. This machine is automatically backed-up to a separate partition on the same disk on a daily basis. Once a week the latest of these daily backups is copied to a normally powered down external disk attached to my laptop. Finally, that disk is backed up regularly to another one that normally is not even on-site. The day that all of these things fail at the same time, I more than likely am

      • Sounds like the government should take tips from you. I understand the automatic back-up that happens (though you use the same disk), but the others are done manually? That sounds like a lot of work for someone who is too lazy to reply to emails from family members.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mce ( 509 )

          You're right, the second and third level backups are done manually. But it's not a lot of work, as each just involves a single file copy operation. My off-site disk is stored in a location that I need to pass by very frequently anyway. I just pick up the disk when I'm there and bring it back the next day or the day after.

          Regarding lazyness, it's all a matter of trade-off. Are you willing to loose your digital history or not? I sure as hell am not, so I make sure to have my backups under control. OTOH, w

    • Use a third party email client locally.

      I use mac's so it's Apple Mail, but thunderbird works just fine. Set your gmail account to leave messages on the server. when you connect with thunderbird you download all messages that you already haven't gotten.

      you can archive stuff with gmail, and your local client will download those too.

      It is a great saftey net because it is unlikely both will fail at the same time. Plus once it is on your machine you can back it up as you like.
    • I worry about this a lot too. On a hopefully helpful related story, I recently thought about using Amazon's S3 storing my essential data backups. Sure, they seem to have a great record of always being available and secure and all that, but who knows. My critical data would be handled by a corporation, which is black-box to me, who knows what is going on in there, or what might happen in the future. Also by them being a big company they would be a huge target for black-hat hackers. Could you imagine the crac

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )
        I looked at Amazon S3, however it turns out to cost the same over a 12 month period to buy a network attached hard disk, an ADSL router, small UPS and pay for connection and 12 months broadband at my brothers home 200 miles away, then do daily rsyncs. After year one the costs with this route plummet to the broadband connection and the electricity. The Amazon costs stay the same year on year.

        Even a DLT VS4 drive and half a dozen tapes is cheaper over a two year period than Amazon S3.
      • I worry the same - but then I stared using Mozy with my own encryption key (2gb space for free), and it backs up my thunderbird folder every half hour so I don't worry about that anymore, now I just worry about forgetting my key :)
    • The company should have "partnered" with Gmail. They could have sent out an e-mail like this:

      "Dear valued PlusNet customer,

      PlusNet has recently partnered with Google for the provision of e-mail services. This new service will give you 2.7GB of e-mail storage space and the ability to access your e-mail via secure login from any computer with an internet connection. Of course you will still be able to download and send e-mail from your home PC just as you already do, but with the addition of Gmails world

  • units, people, watch your units. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:43AM (#19190641) Homepage Journal
    "700 Gb" does not seem much (divide by gmail box size and you get the number of 200 maxed out beefy gmail users), because it is an idiotic measure of stolen goods. "X raped whopping 500 women pounds", "Y stole 4500 banknotes from the bank", "Z trespassed 100 feet of my property".

    Reminds me of the Russian cartoon for kids, where different animals measure their sizes relative to the sizes of other animals, and in the end the Python says "I am much longer in Kakadoo than in Elephants".
    • I can't say as I do not know what PlusNet's email capacity limit for each account was, but most ISPs have small limits 20mb or less for each account, if it was so, 700GB is a hell of an impact. Some people might not even know what they lost.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )
        If you actually followed the story at the time, the vast bulk of the email lost was stuff that had already been downloaded at least once from their mail servers and customers had just left it there. Very few unread emails where actually lost, and Plus.Net don't advertise their email service as something that you can leave emails on. It is strictly a store and forward service, with a webmail option for when you are travelling.
    • It doesn't matter how little or how much. It doesn't matter if my stuff was even affected.

      If I'm trusting you with my data, that means I've decided you'll probably be at least as careful with it as I would be, and it will probably save me some time from having to do my own backups and such. In the case of email, it would mean that I'm sick of running my own mailserver, worrying about whether I'm online or not, etc etc...

      If your service goes down for a bit, I might be able to understand, especially if it's a

  • Security software (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @09:49AM (#19190665)

    Network director Phil Webb goes on to recommend that their customers install security software, along with telling them that they shouldn't call up to complain. One might suggest that they need to practice what they preach."
    A few comments:
    1. They almost certainly were using security software. The problem is that it is awfully difficult to judge effective security software from the much more common snake oil that is out there.
    2. There is a decent chance that the breach was not the fault of the security software but some kind of human error. They probably made the common mistake of assuming all they had to do was install firewall, intrusion detection and anti-malware tools and they were magically fully protected.
    3. This kind of event will probably become commonplace. There is a lot of money to be made, the crackers are technically more competent than much of the sysadmin community, and they only need to attack at the weakest points.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by joto ( 134244 )

      They almost certainly were using security software. The problem is that it is awfully difficult to judge effective security software from the much more common snake oil that is out there.

      Obviously not. Assuming they used security software, this ISP certainly learned the difference.

      There is a decent chance that the breach was not the fault of the security software but some kind of human error. They probably made the common mistake of assuming all they had to do was install firewall, intrusion detection a

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Serious Poo ( 597509 )
      No offense intended, but when you say "almost certainly", "there's a decent chance", and "will probably" that means that you don't really know and are making assumptions and/or generalizations. I'm not so forgiving in my view of this ISP's actions - it appears that they messed up big time. While I completely agree that there's a lot of FUD in the security marketplace these days, it's the responsibility of management to hire people who know this stuff cold. People who know that it's "People, Process, and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )
        There was a flaw in the third party software they where using for web mail, and they suffered from a zero day attack. Hardly Plus.Nets fault. On those grounds everyone using Microsoft software would be in for trouble.

        On the plus side they are activating their spam filtering for free, which was previously a paid for service.

        As a Plus.Net customer I have not actually been effected, as I ditch all email addressed directly to the account, as I have a domain hosted with them, and that does not appear to have bee

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )
          They used a proprietary web mail product, which suffered from a 0day attack.

          Obviously this is not desireable, but it can happen to any software... The real reason they turned it off, is because due to the webmail system being proprietary, they can't fix this problem so it will only get compromised repeatedly.

          Also, most of the webmail systems i've seen don't hold any data or authentication details themselves, they just hook over an imap server, so by hacking the webmail system you can only compromise the use

        • There was a flaw in the third party software they where using for web mail, and they suffered from a zero day attack. Hardly Plus.Nets fault.

          On the contrary. The software they chose to use was bug-ridden — and I don't mean subtle, occasional bugs, I mean "incapable of even performing its basic functions correctly" — and this was abundantly clear to anyone who had tried to use it for more than a few minutes and received a couple of HTML e-mails. It doesn't require a 45th level geek to appreci

  • Well if it's not incompetence that mars PlusNet's service then it's deception. Over the last couple of years customers have had to endure blatent throttling of P2P and caps on bandwidth, the closure of their binary Usenet service and customers being banned from their forums for daring to criticise them.

    I can only blame myself for staying for so long. My previous ISP provided an excellent service but was far more expensive. As always, you get what you pay for.

    • I used to be with a wonderful ISP known as Metronet. They were cheap, but had *really* clued up staff (i.e. when you phone you don't speak to phone monkeys - you speak to actual techs). Meanwhile, a shite ISP called PlusNet who had been publicly floated, wanted to impress share holders with their fantastic management team so decided to buy a small-ish ISP, namely Metronet and then proceeded to migrate Metronet customers to the PlusNet platform resulting to many of them leaving (including me). All the while

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Arimus ( 198136 )
        They didn't used to be shite....

        At one point PN where probably the best ISP in the UK - sadly after floating on the stock market those days soon came to an end at the alter of shareholder profits and sod the customer :(.

        Anyway even while a good ISP one thing PN had going for it was the customer forums - usually had a lot of knowledgable people on so even if you ran some odd software/os/hardware combination or wanted to do something beyond a simple mail form on your website you'd get alot of community help.

        I
  • From PlusNet's letter:
    In the meantime, if you use Webmail to check your PlusNet email from your own PC, you might find it more convenient to use an email program which runs on your PC instead.

    So let me get this straight: PlusNet's closing down the WebMail service, but leaves the main e-mail server running, so

    (1) the spam still comes in to the e-mail addresses
    (2) users now cannot access via their Internet Browser and must use an e-mail client which may not filter spam as well (or sometimes at all)

    B

    • (1) the spam still comes in to the e-mail addresses
      Its not like we didn't get spam before this happened.

    • (2) users now cannot access via their Internet Browser and must use an e-mail client which may not filter spam as well (or sometimes at all)

      In what way is this worse than accessing it via a browser, where you rely on PlusNet's own spam filtering, which is proven not to work well (or at all)?

      I can always install Thunderbird and use its built-in filtering. Or I can even setup my own mailserver (I like bogofilter and IMAP) and use fetchmail to collect my email. But I cannot do anything about the shitty or no

  • I understand other BT costumers aren't happy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) * on Saturday May 19, 2007 @10:09AM (#19190741)
    Like, um...this guy [youtube.com].

  • Data Protection Act? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phil246 ( 803464 ) on Saturday May 19, 2007 @10:17AM (#19190783)
    Customers of this ISP may want to check to see if they can take action against them under the data protection act.
    in particular, the sections:
    "Personal data should be securely kept, and not transferred to any other country without adequate protection."
    and
    "Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data."

    ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act [wikipedia.org] )

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Peet42 ( 904274 )
      It's a pretty sad state of affairs. I used to be with Plus Net, and they used to be really good. I dropped their service when they sacked a lot of their technical guys and hired a premium-rate call centre to handle their technical queries through a very s...l...o...w... script instead of just talking to you on an ordinary national-rate 'phone line to talk to someone who actually knew what was going on. The guys in the call centre used to look at the same web page as I did to find out if there were any pr
      • people get CHARGED PREMIUM to call helpdesk? WTF dude? In my country, helpdesk lines are ALWAYS 800-like (I think it's even mandatory). Of course, you're gonna pay for this in your monthly bill, but I think this is fair.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Phil246 ( 803464 )
          Yeah, its a common practise in the UK for a corporation who wants to squeeze a little more off their customers.
          It sure doesnt go down well but there is very little option at times.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by blowdart ( 31458 )
            Except it's not actually true; plusnet's support numbers (at the bottom of every page) have a direct, Sheffield number and an 0845 (local rate) number. Neither are premium rate.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Peet42 ( 904274 )
              You obviously didn't get the mailshot explaining their "rationalisations". For the last three weeks I was with them, at least, a call to one of those numbers just got a 'phone tree leading to a recorded message asking you to call the new "support centre" number. They just didn't want to reprint all the stationery.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by blowdart ( 31458 )
                What stationary? It's on the *website*

              • You're doing better than I was. At the time I left them, there was no way at all to get through the phone menu system to speak to a real person. I'm pretty sure about this, because I tried all the remotely plausible paths through the menus, as my phone bill will testify.

            • Re:let me get this straight... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <.moc.eeznerif.todhsals. .ta. .treb.> on Saturday May 19, 2007 @11:48AM (#19191327) Homepage
              0845 is _NOT_ local rate...
              It is LO-CALL rate, which is a revenue sharing service. It is charged at the same cost local rate calls used to be in the early 90s, and it is always charged by the minute regardless of your phone service plan. Also, inclusive minutes usually don't count for calls to 0845 numbers.
              BT charge a flat rate of 5p for a 1 hour national landline call at evenings and weekends on their lowest call plan, a 1 hour evening or weekend call to an 0845 number would cost 120p evenings and 60p weekends. BT's higher calling plans (options 2 and 3) charge you nothing for the first 60 minutes to a national number at evenings or weekends (again 0845 arent included) and in the case of option 3, also during the day.

              What's worse is, a share of the call revenue goes to the company operating the number (which is why BT can't offer free calls to 0845) which gives these companies an incentive to keep you on hold.
              In essence, 0845 really is premium rate. It may be a lower per-minute cost than 09 premium rate numbers, but it works in just the same way.

              • What's worse is, a share of the call revenue goes to the company operating the number (which is why BT can't offer free calls to 0845) which gives these companies an incentive to keep you on hold..
                Thats ending later this year, number holders no longer get a cut of the call revenue for lo-call numbers.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by u38cg ( 607297 )
                And if you haven't come across it yet, this [slashdot.org] is what you need to deal with these annoying numbers.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Peet42 ( 904274 )
          It's a common practice here. I often suspect the shadier ISPs of bringing their DNS servers down for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon just for the flurry of premium-rate 'phone calls it nets them.

          Plus Net were one of the few that had a "normal" 'phone number staffed by tech-savvy people who could usually help you in seconds. As this was obviously a net drain on resources, they decided to turn tech support into a net earner by hiring a premium rate call cantre, then giving them a "script" to work from d

  • We can just blame this on sysadmins that don't want to work at underpaying jobs with bad managers that don't give any respect and corporate executives that don't really give a damn about quality of service.

  • According to Plusnet the problems were exploited before being known about publicly and the leak of email addresses is "not possible to patch". If this is true, then it's rather less of a faux pas than some of their previous problems. Having had the pleasure of dealing with Plus customer support a few times over the last few months I'd be interested to see some corroboration of what the problems actually were from elsewhere, rather than just taking their word for it, though.

    The bigger question is who is el
    • It is the same Atmail software, although I hear that Plusnet made custom modifications to the software. Difficult to say, perhaps a programmer made changes and he is no longer working there, perhaps its an older version of the software they won't/can't upgrade. I did see Atmail has an update out on the 17th...

      This has a little bit about the situation:

      http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/3088.html [thinkbroadband.com]
  • I'm sure the eager and well paid sysadmins in Mumbai and Bangalore will get right on that problem.
  • in the ultimate admission of incompetence

    Personally, I think the British have an admirable demeanor in the face of adversity or even outright defeat, as compared to the US for example. Stiff upper lip, all that stuff. Surely it's better to admit incompetence than not? Then again, maybe it's just our (American) culture of denial that annoys me.

  • I cancelled months ago, and was still hit by the problem. Luckily, since I always sign up with unique addresses, the one in question is now forwarded to abuse@plus.net , and they can deal with the damage.

  • Their webmail service was compromised this week, and spammers got hold of customers' e-mail addresses who they've been happily spamming away ever since.
    yeesh, What the hell is that sentence supposed to mean?
    Aside from the grammatical problems, what does the author mean by "spammers got hold of customers' e-mail addresses"? Do they actually mean that spammers aquired login access to email accounts?

    oh, and no, I don't feel like reading the fine article.

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