[Elecraft] Fraud

[Jim Lowman]

Trying to reach anyone at Yahoo has turned out to be an exercise in 
futility.

A good friend owns a nice gift shop nearby.  Her old computer died, and 
I've been helping her get a new one.  It arrived yesterday.

Apparently, her Yahoo e-mail account has been compromised - as have 
several others, no doubt.
I couldn't even find a support phone number for Yahoo anywhere on their 
website.  I had to Google for it.
Then, she kept getting the usual, "Due to heavy calling..." and being 
disconnected.

In the meantime, communications from vendors and curious prospective 
buyers are piling up in her inbox that she can't access.
Hopefully, they will call her business number when their e-mails are 
going unanswered.

The usual, easy way to reset a password doesn't work, because the 
compromise apparently points to some cell phone number that isn't hers.
And, she hadn't set up an alternate e-mail address or a security question.

I explained that it's not the best idea to have an e-mail account for 
her business with one of these free e-mail providers.
But she's operating on a shoestring, thanks to the state of the economy.

The scary part is that Yahoo is actually the ISP behind my SBCGlobal.net 
address.  However, AT&T might have better luck with Yahoo if I had a 
problem.

73 de Jim - AD6CW

On 2/6/2014 4:05 PM, Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT wrote:
> Seriously folks.
>
> I retired last year after 23 years running an ISP.
>
> Among other things, AOL is a free E-Mail provider, not unlike Hotmail, 
> Yahoo or GMail.  They can't afford to invest a whole lot of time and 
> staff into policing their service, especially where the only 
> punishment they have is to take a free E-Mail address away from 
> someone they can't possibly track down.
>
> Trying to find someone who will bother to understand  that at any big 
> provider is at least as difficult as teaching a pig to sing.
>
> Trying to find someone who cares would be several orders of magnitude 
> harder.
>
> 73 -- Lynn
>