This is unbelievable. If I was paranoid, and a conspiracy theorist, I might think there was something going on here.

For the third time in two weeks, I’ve had stock replies from online companies or organisations that don’t read email and send stock replies.

This time, it’s the Digital Spy forums.

I quite fancied joining this forum, but they have a policy of not allowing ‘anonymous’ email addresses such as Yahoo and Gmail. They’ve decided in their “wisdom” that anyone coming from those domains must be bad, out to scam and spam everyone.

Apparently, I’m no better, because when I went to register with an email address under my own domain name (one that has been registered for 4 years, with a real name and genuine contact information (that I get spammed with)) I’m told that I’m a criminal and am not welcome my address is invalid.

Apparently I have to sign up using an email address from my ISP.

My ISP is BT. I don’t have my email account active with them, for the very reason that ISPs tend to be temporary. Ironically, BT also use Yahoo for their email.

So I wrote to see if I could join the forum by manually applying:

I cannot register for the forum because it tells me that my email address has been rejected: “Please note that Digital Spy does not accept registrations from anonymous webmail providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo.”

Given that my domain has been registered for 4 years and has a valid postal address attached to it, this is quite insulting. Are you telling me that I have to use a fairly temporal email address from my ISP (which is BT at present, who ironically team up with Yahoo, one of your “banned” addresses) to use your forum? That’s ridiculous.

I was looking forward to commenting on some of the discussion threads, particularly those that reference the articles I write at HDTVUK.tv, a site that receives some 5,000 visitors per day. Perhaps you don’t want my presence here?

Yes I know it’s snotty but after filling out forms and completely annoying captchas, I was a little annoyed to be rejected as a potential spammer. And besides, I enjoy the feedback.

Today I got this reply:

Hi,

Unfortunately we do not accept registrations from anonymous email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail.  This is due to previous abuse issues from users with email addresses on these services.

We apologise for the inconvenience, but the no-anonymous addresses rule is designed to protect our community.

Thanks for not reading my email, and (ironically) not even having the courtesy to sign your anonymous email with the name of a real person. I’d already told you what your FAQ contained. Don’t just quote it back at me!

Apparently, I’m just anonymous, and I’m going to spam everyone. Oh well, their loss I suppose.