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By Ben King, 13 May 2002 12:45

NEWS Telewest has suspended its UseNet newsgroup access after anti-spam campaigners threatened to ban it. Telewest took the action in response to a "UseNet Death Penalty", (UDP) passed by an anti-spam campaigner in response to a stream of inappropriate postings apparently originating from users of Telewest's ISP business, Blueyonder. UseNet is the internet's oldest and largest newsgroup system, but users are consistently plagued by such unwanted postings. The postings are not the same as the junk email messages which are commonly referred to as "spam". However, they often promote the same dodgy services, such as 'get rich quick' schemes and pornographic websites. UseNet doesn't have a central organising body, but a UDP is effectively a call on all ISPs which provide access to UseNet to block postings from an ISP which has failed to stop spam coming from its network. The penalty was announced by David Ritz, a volunteer who is about as close as UseNet gets to an administrator, and a long-term opponent of spam postings. The ban is due to come into force on Wednesday (15 May). However, Blueyonder has pre-empted the action by voluntarily suspending itself from UseNet. A statement on the Blueyonder website said the action had been taken because of the "high volumes of spam originating from the Blueyonder network". The company also claimed the spam is not originating from its own computers, or those of its customers, but said that external spammers are exploiting "poorly configured customer computers" to post the offending messages onto UseNet. By using vulnerable computers as "relay agents", the company says, spammers are able to send messages which appear to originate from Blueyonder computers. While the ban is in place Blueyonder customers will still be able to make posts to UseNet, but they will only be visible to other Blueyonder customers. Canadian ISP Videotron has also received a UDP, which came into effect on 10 May. Other major ISPs, including Bell Atlantic, Starnet and UUnet have all been issued with UDPs in the past. Many others have been threatened, though they are generally quick to address the spam posting problem once the threat of a UDP has been made.