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In the past week or so, some of my clients have been contacting me with problems sending outgoing emails. The problem has been caused by BT Yahoo!

BT are now preventing their broadband users, both personal and business, from sending emails using some non-BT email accounts. This, BT say, is for adding protection to their customers, though it appears to be more a move for security to their servers.

My frustration was not so much with this new step, but the fact that as a long time BT customer I did not receive written warning or information about the change; which resulted in too much of my own time trying to understand the problem and then getting the correct information from BT.

BT stated that, for security reasons, they were now preventing their customers from sending emails from email client software such as Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird, when the SMTP or ‘from’ email address is not a BT Yahoo! email address or a “validated alternative email address”. Last month, Sky stopped the use of their SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) servers to send emails.

Both of these changes have meant that many Sky and BT Yahoo! broadband users have been unable to send email until they change their SMTP settings, or in the case of BT Yahoo! customers, go through a process of validating their email address.

For anyone using BT broadband as their ISP (Internet Service Provider) and are currently using or about to set up non-BT email accounts you can still do this, but instructions on how to set up your non-BT email account has changed. See the BT website for more information and help.