Like many New Zealand businesses today, we have received a deluge of spam emails from Telecom client email addresses, who use their YahooXtra email service.It has also made the mainstream media, and both the Stuff website and NZ Herald website have stories about it.

This appears to be a similar problem that affected Telecoms email service back in January and December last year, which we also wrote about here. We are aware that as a result of this compromise, that there is also the possibility that at least some of Telecoms IPs have become blacklisted on various blacklists. If you are an Yahooxtra customer and some of the emails you are sending are bouncing back with an RBL junkmail warning, please log a support call with Telecom, as Telecom will need to get this removed from the blacklist database.

If you receive any of these spam emails from Yahooxtra email address, please delete them, and don’t click on any links in the email. If you are a YahooXtra email Customer, we suggest you switch to a more reliable platform, especially if you are a business. No New Zealand Business should still be using the free email address that their ISP provides to them. It isn’t really ‘free’ if you are constantly having problems with it. Please read our article Top 10 Reasons why NZ Business’s need to stop using free ISP email addresses – UPDATED

At the Lounge Network, we do provide true Business Quality email services, and unlike with Yahoo Xtras system, our servers and all of our support is based in New Zealand. Also our email services use your own domain name, so you can setup your own custom email addresses. eg yourname@yourcompany.co.nz. Read more about our NZ Business Quality email services.

If you are interested in using our Domain based email services, please contact us, or use our sign form to signup directly to our hosting services.

UPDATE 22/01/2014

Telecom have since issued a press release to say that these emails are phishing emails that are not being sent directly via their servers. They are most likely using the email addresses and details that were sourced by hackers, the previous time they were hacked. Please refer to the Telecom website for more information.