BTYahoo email accounts being hacked
The latest installment of the email problems related to Yahoo!
http://www.fastcompany.com/3006724/creative-conversations/why-cant-persistent-hacking-yahoo-mail-be-stopped
seems to be hitting BTYahoo! customers, who are reporting that their webmail accounts have been compromised, and spam sent to people in their online address books or whose addresses are in stored emails on the webmail interface.
Some customers have found it impossible to change their online security information via the web interface and are getting the usual helpdesk runaround.
So far BT are behaving in the way they know best - pretending that there really isn't a problem and if it is, it is the customers' fault.
1 - they are ignoring the issue on their public facing status web pages and Usenet announce groups.
2 - individual customers are so far, not being told of any wider problem, and given anti-phishing advice.
3 - The BT Community forum moderators, after a few days and over a hundred postings, are making non-committal statements that investigations are going on - but remain tight-lipped about whether there has been any centra security breach.
http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-BB-Queries/BT-email-accounts-hacked/m-p/801450#M46429
4 - the "banning" habit is still in fashion on the BT Community forum - those with a reputation for commenting on privacy matters are kept off the forum - not because of the content of their posts but because of who they are. They seem to have learned nothing from their BT Beta forum/Phorm-Webwise PR disaster.
There seems little interest in the press in the security melt down of a major global and UK email provider.
BTYahoo! customers should seriously consider cleaninig out the contents of their webmail contact lists and ALL email folders so that if the accounts ARE accessed, there is nothing in them to harvest. They should also make sure the Trash folder is emptied every time they visit the webmail interface. With an email system as unreliable as that currently being provided by BT through Yahoo!, customers should simply not rely on it or use it for anything mission critical.
It would be a refreshing change if BT and Yahoo! could be a lot more open with customers, and provide some USEFL answers as well as a decent level of customer service to hacked customers. But old habits die hard, and the BT that signed a covert deal for secret interception trials with Phorm back in 2006 seems to find it hard to understand transparency and openness.