BT Internet 553 error - this is what we know at the moment
24 March, 2008
Some people with BT broadband will find that they are no longer able to send mail using third party portable email addresses. This is because BT in their infinite wisdom have implemented a new security policy (on the quiet) which means you can only send email from POP3 or SMTP mail servers with a portable email address if you have validated the email address with them first.
We were first alerted to this by one of our very IT savvy clients who had followed it up with them and was told of the new email validation system. We did a bit of Googling and we’ll share what we’ve discovered so far.
Ignoring the obvious problem (it’s BT), the issue seems to be that they have various brands and packages (and we have no idea at this moment in time if business broadband accounts are affected). Most people don’t seem to know what they have signed up for (and don’t waste your life asking BT – they still phone us to offer us business broadband and we’ve had it for three years). According to Phil Gyford there are currently BT Yahoo, BT Connect, BT Openworld and BT Total Broadband. Phil provides an excellent account of his frustrations trying to sort out his mum’s email based on the instructions given to him by BT.
Shortly afterwards we spotted this posted on ecademy
Still nothing listed on the BT press releases or on our favourite source of IT updates – The Register
We’ve since found information on yahoo answers which might help you make sense of the instructions BT are sending out – as Phil points out in his blog the screen you see is not the screen they think you see…
Update: More information here on the BT users forum This article has some useful external links and also a few choice words about BT’s customer service.
The important point to get across here is this: Don’t shout at your web developers/hosting providers. We received no clue that BT were going to do this (in fact I’d be amazed if anyone in BT knew they were going to either as one of our friends called and was told that the problem was down to a system outage, the operative on the end of the phone denied all knowledge of the new email validation policy). Whilst we will be happy to give advice, the problem lies completely in the hands of BT – prepare to lose at least three or four chargeable hours tomorrow – and if their level of compensation is anything to go by from our recent day long outage you might be lucky to get a fiver. One way to get them to dig deeper is to phone head office and ask to be put through to the MD’s PA – that does tend to get their attention.
We’ll be evaluating alternative service providers and preparing to provide advice for our clients if required. It’s not the fact that BT have finally woken up to the issue of spammers, it’s the fact that they think they can implement a change which affects hundreds of consumers and causes no end of grief for their web service providers without any prior notification.
A short term (though not very practical) solution is to use webmail if available. We will update this blog as more information becomes available.
Rachael posted this in Business, News
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