Apparently someone took over a btl.net email account and has been sending HUNDREDS of "delivery failed" email messages to everyone with a btl.net email address. I am hoping they resolve this soon, but here is all the information I have received so far (btw I received 27 of them while typing this post!!!

Unfortunate for me, these spammers are using my SMTP address. Jacked!!!

I have contacted Mr. Winston Aspinal, Internet Tech at BTL. He's going in to look at it. His number is 610-2916. I've forwarded a couple to him, he needs to see the headers to investigate the source.

I have absolutely nothing to do with this, am just an unfortunate bystander.

When I was last in England several ISPs blocked anything from BTL.net. I couldn't persuade them to let up on the ban.

i got the same messsage!

OK,, i have not received one in the last 5 minutes! maybe it's fixed?

never mind,, still coming in,,

I just came back from a walk and saw there were only about 25 this time, maybe it's over?

I just got 17 MORE

ok I guess I lied earlier, but at least they are not coming as fast an furious as they were earlier!!!!

woke up this morning to 209 more,,,

213 for me................

266

I don't know about you Barnacle, but I'm not mad that BG got more than we did!!!

I wonder where the hello these things are coming from? Is it just we 3 getting them

No, everyone who has a .btl email address is getting them. I even got a call from Corona del Mar yesterday asking me about them....if you look they are each addressed to about fifty people all with btl.net email addresses...ridiculous

This is So ridiculous indeed.

I am SO mad at them that I have not even opened one too see .

I'm no big fan of BTL's, but in this case I don't think it's BTL's fault.
I have had this three or four times with one of my addresses ....... one morning I woke up to find 7,900+ "returned" messages (all within less than 12 hours). It's totally insane!!
My solution was to contact the provider, cancel my account for half an hour and re-up it.

more than likely someone has a virus who has a lot of btl addresses in their address book. the virus is going thru and causing mail to be sent to everyone in that address book.

was out for the day and got back to 269 of this CRAP

Me too...I lost count.

set rules in your email program and have them go into your email trash. then take the rules off when it backs off a bit

I hope there mails will go away soon. I am TIRED of receiving them.

It's like they are coming every minute.

Is this still a problem? The last couple of days I have had emails to a btl address bounced back to me with a permanent fail to deliver error message.

Someone I know in the States has had emails to a BTL address bounced repeatedly. She was trying to book a group and was on the point of abandoning it and taking the group to another country when I discovered and found a non-BTL address, which worked.

This isn't a new problem and BTL know about it. They just can't be bothered to do anything about it.

Ruth, I send an email to Ruby's about 4 hours ago and have had no bounce back.

Hummm...I wonder if BTL doesn't like gmail? I think I'll try sending using something other than gmail.

BTL is having a problem with gmail at the moment. Not sure what the glitch is. They are working on it.

Thanks Amanda. I finally got email successfully delivered to a BTL address with a yahoo account.

They're back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Same bogus email address as before. Would think that BTL would have PERMANENTLY fixed this problem.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! they are back.

I am getting too.

Please, please, please - If you are using a BTL email account, this problem will never end. The issue is the btl.net domain is tied to all of the IP addresses that BTL controls. Whole blocks of the BTL network are put on spam blacklists everyday - making it almost impossible to operate with any POP/IMAP account, let alone a btl.net email address. For so many reasons, do yourself a favor and get a gmail address and use the web to access it. If you are a business, switch over to Google Apps for your domain.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging.html

Good luck.

I had the old BTL account forwarding to my yahoo account, and when I go out there to try and stop it, there is nothing on their page to let me stop! This is ridiculous.

Just close the Yahoo account and open another. Better still, use Google, as it's POP3/IMAP friendly and Yahoo isn't (unless you pay them each year).

Great idea Peter, if it weren't for the fact that the yahoo email address is on thousands of business cards and flyers all over who knows where...and the problem is not the yahoo account. It's the old BTL account that I have forwarded to the yahoo account. I get nothing from the btl account anymore except for spam, and if BTL made it simple to use that account, I could just go and stop the forwarding.

I have a gmail personal account and I do like it. If I were to open another business GMAIL account, I would have to forward all of my Yahoo emails to it which would include all of the BTL crap that comes through on that one.

If a computer has this virus and you send an e-mail, is it contagious to the computers that you send???

I think so. A week or so ago when it first happened, a couple of people hit "reply all" and send a nasty message about cutting out the crap.....once that happened, then everyone got it again.

I think if you dont send to the "independent.cope" email address, you will be fine. In other words, I dont think it spreads, but then again, maybe Barnacle or BelizeGial could answer better because mine is forwarded from a BTL account to a Yahoo account, and I do not use the BTL account to send mail.

Thanks! That is what I was afeared...Having been doing some work for someone with a btl.net account and they have that virus. Am afraid to send anything with their account.

Get anti-malware software that scans outgoing (and incoming) emails. And scan your whole HD once a week. I take great care to exclude malware from my computer, yet my most recent scan showed things that got on there I know not how. A few years ago, when i wasn't so fastidious about malware, my computer was used to send out many thousand spam messages. I only found out when a recipient checked the IP address that had sent the messages and traced it to me. Turned out I had a Trojan which was seemingly innocuous when it got onto my machine and wasn't detected by the anti-malware software I used then (Norton - absolutely dreadful). Much later something triggered it. This is how many of these work.