Update 1 June 2007

 

The problem seems to be fixed (almost!).  Tiscali say that AOL addresses may still reject Tiscali mail and they’re investigating that one, but the test mails I’ve been sending between my accounts are all arriving.  

 

One thing I’ve learned during the last week is that ISPs sometimes sub-contract out their mail services to other ISPs. For example, users of the Pipex Homecall service have been suffering from the Tiscali problem because Pipex seem to have outsourced their mail to Tiscali. Pipex Homecall users should be OK now though.

 

 

Posted 30 May 2007

 

For about a week now, outgoing mail sent by Tiscali users hasn’t been arriving at its destination.  For a while, Tiscali seemed to be ignoring the problem, then there was an admission on their service status page that mail to sent to some addresses was subject to a ‘slight delay’.  This was an understatement, to say the least.

 

They now claim that the problem was caused by spammers hijacking their outgoing mail server, causing it to be blacklisted by other service providers’ incoming servers.  Today (Wednesday 30 May 2007) they say that the problem is nearing its end, but that it will take time for other mail servers to remove Tiscali from the blacklist

 

There’s something strange going on though.  I’ve been running some tests and I’ve found that even an email sent from one Tiscali email address to another doesn’t arrive.  Does this mean that Tiscali has blacklisted itself?  Hmmm....

 

Whatever’s going on, you can get round this problem for now (and give yourself some insurance for the next time it happens) by creating a GoogleMail account.  GoogleMail is excellent and free.  Sign up by clicking here.