Newspaper involved in email spam

The Daily Telegraph's virus protection system caused more damage than a potential bug when it tried to deal with an email virus last week.

The incident occurred after an email containing the Love Letter virus was triggered at an external company and sent to its Outlook contacts list. On reaching the Telegraph, the gateway virus checker picked up the worm, but sent out warning messages to everybody included in the original email.

Hundreds of users, including Network News, received more than 20 emails sent continuously at 10-minute intervals. As the Love Letter virus only sends out a single email to the Outlook contacts list, the Telegraph's virus scanner only succeeded in increasing the damage the virus would have done.

Brian Faulkner, network manager at Network News, explained that the virus had been successfully cleaned. "It is enough to clean the email - there is no need to spam people as well," he said.

In a similar incident, the Communications Managers Association (CMA) apologised after it set off an email spam last week. A fault in its Technology Channel sent 40 unsolicited messages to each of its members.

One user said: "It seems to have handed its new service to a spamming company for promotion. I've taken 40 emails from the CMA. I don't even recall signing up for the service."

Another user added: "I think that the Technology Channel has demonstrated a sad lack of awareness regarding email technology."

The CMA blamed a server problem for the mistake. "As the first issue of a new project we used an outsource partner for the distribution of our newsletter. Unfortunately, server problems resulted in certain people receiving multiple emails," it said.

First published in Network News

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