Re: Accessing Hijacked email accounts

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:39:43 -0400
Alexander Muentz <lex@...> wrote:

> First off, I'd suggest she contact Yahoo! and Hotmail to ask
> for the accounts to be frozen. There may be some way (secret
> questions & the like) that she can use to authenticate
> herself as the original owner.

The problem is that if the account was infiltrated, the secret
question etc. is probably already changed.
If the questions about name, adress etc. have not been
answered correctly there will be some problems to say the
least.

But the best is to contact the help desk and explain the
situation, furthermore contact all the friends etc. who have
the adresses (or at least as much as possible) because this
avoids any more mail adresses etc. to be infiltrated or
private information to go into the wrong hands.


> I've not dealt with the large free email providers on this,
> but I have been in the admin's position when a customer asks
> to have their hijacked account secured and returned to them.
> Acting in a polite, reasonable manner goes pretty far in my
> book.

The main problem is the authentification as in most cases the
secret question has been changed. But if you are able to say
roundabout when the account has been hacked freemailers help
desk most likely can see that what you say is for real and
will freeze the account and (for example if your address was
given at first) send an authentification letter to the adress
or something like that.


**********************************************************************
For Listserv Instructions, see http://www.lawlists.net/cyberia
Off-Topic threads: http://www.lawlists.net/mailman/listinfo/cyberia-ot
Need more help? Send mail to: Cyberia-L-Request@...
**********************************************************************