Dear Customer, This is an automated response to the email you sent to the BT Acceptable Use team. Please read this email carefully as it contains important information about the BT Acceptable Use Policy and the BT Acceptable Use team.
The BT Acceptable Use team investigates every report we receive but, due to the high number of messages involved, we can?t send a personal reply to every one. Where applicable, we?ll do our best to reply within five working days, particularly if we need more information, but this email may be the only response you?ll see. The BT Acceptable Use team will investigate all allegations of misuse and if we find that a BT customer is in breach of the BT Terms & Conditions and / or Acceptable Use Policy we?ll take appropriate action against the account holder. All cases of abuse are taken very seriously. However, we can only take action where the misuse originates from our network or customer base. TYPES OF ABUSE THAT SHOULD BE REPORTED TO BT First, please report abuse where someone using a BT domain or a BT IP address has undertaken the activity. The domains in question include: btinternet.com btopenworld.com btconnect.com btclick.com talk21.com Secondly, you should report abuse to BT where the abuse originates from an IP address used by BT. For more information, please go to http://www.ripe.net Thirdly, you should report abuse to BT if the abuse originates from a BT service or application, i.e. a BT email service such as talk21, btinternet.com or any other application supported or maintained by BT. Please see the notes below for more information. Legal constraints prevent us giving you specific information about any action we may take against an offender, but if you believe a BT customer has carried out an illegal activity over the internet, then you should immediately contact your local police force to report this. When going to the police you should make sure that you?ve any supporting information that might be available. We?re sorry, but BT isn?t in a position to report allegations of illegal activity to the police on your behalf. Please note: this is an automatic email and we?re unable to respond to replies sent to this address. Thank you for reporting this case to us; we appreciate your help and co-operation in this matter. Yours sincerely, BT Acceptable Use team http://www.abuse-guidance.com/ For more information please see the notes below: 1. Abuse from a non-BT network We?re sorry, but BT can?t take action where the origin of the abuse is from a non-BT customer. In these circumstances please report the abuse directly to the offender?s Internet Service Provider (ISP). The easiest way to identify the source ISP is to find the IP address from where the abuse originates. You can identify the ISP using a web-based tool - please go to http://www.ripe.net Select the Whois db and enter the relevant IP address. An email address for reporting abuse is usually included in the page that opens. 2. Reporting of unsolicited email (spam) Please include your original email on this subject with any and all subsequent emails, so that we can maintain continuity and quickly deal with your concerns. Because of the way the internet operates it isn?t always possible to trust the information shown in the ?From? and even ?To? address. We therefore need the header information that shows the true origin of the email (please see 6 below). Please include the full header information that shows the IP address relevant to your report. It?s possible that emails appearing to be from trusted parties may have been generated by a virus waiting for an unsuspecting person to open it, so please take care. Please send us reports of spam that originate only from our network. We can?t take action on behalf of other ISPs. Please make sure that you include the header information so that we can act quickly. 3. Email not addressed to me Senders of bulk email often put random email addresses in the ?To? field of email being sent. They then Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) to other recipients, so that the email appears to be addressed to someone else. 4. Pornographic material If you?re faced with illegal material please send a report to the Internet Watch Foundation. You can do this directly via the web at http://www.iwf.org.uk/index.html The IWF works with international bodies to remove illegal material from the internet. 5. BT Yahoo! SpamGuard BT Yahoo! Internet users can use email filtering to reduce the amount of spam (unsolicited junk email) received. BT Yahoo! SpamGuard is automatically switched on for all accounts when a customer signs up for the service. It?s impossible for any email filtering to be 100% effective, so we recommend that you check any filtered email to make sure that it hasn?t been incorrectly identified as spam. This is easy to do via webmail. In addition it?s very easy to report mail that hasn?t been filtered, via the 'This is spam' tab at the top of the webmail page. 6. Header information Emails contain header information not usually seen by the recipient. The header contains details of where the email came from and the path it took through the internet. Please include this information with reports of spam as it provides evidence of the email?s origin. Here's how to do this in Outlook Express: - select the email in question and click on 'File' and then 'Properties' - please copy and paste this information into an email and send it on to us To find headers using other email software, please refer to that email software's Help section. If you still need some help viewing email headers, please contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for advice or visit a free spam report web site for more information. One such site is http://spamcop.net/ 7. Firewall logs and port scanning Firewalls help prevent unwanted access to your computer by monitoring the ports on your computer. Logs are produced by the firewall to show the ports that are scanned. If you're contacting us about a possible port scan please include your firewall log so that we can carry out a full investigation. Before doing this, however, please be aware that what is sometimes thought to be a port scan is nothing more than the 'background noise of the internet'. If you're still concerned, and you run firewall software, you should be able to find your IP log in your firewall software control panel - the IP log is sometimes called 'Events' or something similar. This will show us the time and origin of the attack, and help us identify those responsible so that further action may be taken. We also need to know the time zone used by your computer (e.g. Greenwich Mean Time). If you're not sure of this, please doubleclick on the time display on your computer screen (usually in the bottom right-hand corner). This will open a window showing your clock settings. 8. BT port scan To help protect our users and the network BT periodically carries out port scanning activity. We do this to detect and contact customers with open servers. Using open servers is a breach of the BT Terms & Conditions / Acceptable Use Policies. For more details, please go to http://www.abuse-guidance.com
