This has to do with a service provider in the UK called Tiscali. It is something that has happened to me in the past month and I am incandescent with rage about it. It’s not the fact that it causes me a very slight inconvenience; it is the sheer principle of the thing.

I have a very small circle of friends with whom I share e mails more or less on a daily basis. One of these friends is supposedly served by this Tiscali company. Unable to sleep one night I sent her an e mail which was an innocuous joke and telling her that I was still awake at three in the morning. I sent her another one about ten minutes later, only this one came back as Failed. The reason that it had failed was not the usual reasons. Oh no, this time it came back as BLACKLISTED. Now I had never heard of anybody being blacklisted so why me, what had I done and what are they talking about. As I have said I only have a half a dozen people that I send e mails to, so what can I have done to upset this company? I have to admit I do send e mails to news papers and TV news rooms. But that is only when there is something on the news that aggravates me and I voice my opinion. Having no knowledge of this blacklisting business I trawl the web to see if there is any information on this subject. Eventually I come up with a site that tells me.
Now this is where it gets interesting. These companies that run our broad band, if they suspect that you are sending SPAM they blacklist your IP address. I was under the impression that spam was hundreds if not thousands of e mails per day, and that the purpose of these e mails was advertising. I never realized that e mailing a pal complaing about your dog doing a whoopsy on the new rug was classified as spam. I have just run a check on my e mails and the average e mails sent by me is 226 per month. That is 7.5 per day. Out of those 226, 196 are to friends and family and the rest is to the media or mail order companies for my wife’s card making.

Now comes the nasty bit. From what I have read there is no means of rectifying this situation. There is no way to ask these people why they have done this; or if they have made a mistake can they unblacklist me. They didn’t even ask me if I was running a business and would this blacklisting affect it. Tiscali have never sent me an e mail saying we don’t like what you’re sending to your friends, your jokes stink, we disagree with your politics or even your spelling is rubbish and that’s why we’ve done it. Of couse it could be that they have seen my face on a site and thought, “You’re an ugly critter matey, so we’re going to fix your wagon”. That one I could understand!

My machine is fully protected with Spyware killers virus killers and the like, so I know the machine is not infected or being used as a zombie. Unless Tiscali can prove to me otherwise? I fully understand that spam should be stopped and I agree that it’s a blight on the net, but my puny circle of e mail addresses? Come on get real.

But this is where I really get angry. If my phone provider is cable and I make a phone call. And if a voice comes on the line and says “Your number is blacklisted and you can no longer call anyone who is connected to the overland line. And we are not going to tell you why we have done this”. Should I not be able to ask the question why?
Now I am not of this technological era, the house where I was born had gas as a form of lighting. So for me to deal with and understand how to rectify a mess that a multimillion pound company has made is asking a bit much. I struggle with the mobile phone that was given me, apparently it has a WAP thing and a Multimedia whatsit as well as little tiny buttons that I need a magnifying glass to see, but give it to my nine year old grandson and he’s got the thing washing the dishes. So what chance have I got?

Oh by the way Tiscali My friend is moving her service provider to the same one that I have. And since she is the only one of my friends that is using your service, I care not one jot about you and neither of us will be bothering you again.

We Have a Result

The outcome of this, after a lengthy twoing and froing between Tiscaly and my provider; is that, yes it is Tiscaly’s fault. It would seem that the agent that they use to control their spam had designated myself and numerous others like me as the source of these malicious emails. The really annoying thing about it is that not one word of apology was given by this inept crowd. One may well expect them not to say sorry to another provider’s customer; (ME) but not one single word was said to their own customer that they had inconvenienced. This customer was paying for broadband and the service was only dialup, needless to say she left their clutches in very quick time. No they just wanted to sweep it under the carpet as if it never happened.

So to all of you out there – you have been warned