Help my Mum & Dad get their emails back.

September 9, 2010 1:21 PM

I received a weird email from my Mum a couple of days ago, which was obviously from a hacked account, but I just thought that it was from a fake address as happens sometimes. However it wasn't. Please help!

My Mum & Dad have had the same Yahoo email account for 5-6 years with no problems, but there seems to have been an attack on this email and now they can't get back into it. I have tried to explain procedures (via the phone) but they seemed not to be getting anywhere. I tried to login myself today, and also got nowhere.

The problem is that they also apparently had a MSN email that was their secondary account that has never been used, and all the information is being sent there. Yep you've guessed it, they are also locked out of this account.

I am trying to sort this out but coming up against a brick wall with both accounts being locked out there seems no way of getting either or even one of them opened again. The problem I (and they) have encountered is that the Yahoo account asks them to come back in 24 hours to answer a secret question, but this question is never asked and instead it seems to send the details back to the MSN account!!
I have posted on the WindowsLive site to see if that helps, but this seems to not be working either.

Is there anyway that they can get in touch with Yahoo via the phone (UK) or a direct email to help with this? Or has this happened to anyone else who knows where to find the "secret question"?

Thanks very much, and sorry for the rambly nature of this post, I hope I have explained myself well enough, my head is scrambled trying to sort this out.

posted by djstig to computers & internet (5 answers total)

What happens if they try to reset the password on the MSN account?
posted by desjardins at 1:26 PM on September 9, 2010

Trying to reset the password in MSN causes a problem as this asks for a secret password, and a postcode, which don't seem to give the right information. I am not too sure what information my parents used for this account, if anything. I think it was simply set up as a backup email to the Yahoo one.
posted by djstig at 1:40 PM on September 9, 2010

I'm sorry to say this is why relying on free email services for your primary account is a bad idea, there's no customer service and no way to recover it if it's ever stolen or compromised. With .com/.net/.org domains costing $9/year for registration and shared hosting on a server as little as $4.95/month, this might be a good time to set your parents up with an email account on a domain where you have relatively full control of the MX records.
posted by thewalrus at 2:48 PM on September 9, 2010

When this happened to my Dad, I found a customer service number and called Yahoo directly. Unfortunately, whoever had hacked the account had also changed all the security questions and answers, plus all his identifying info, so Yahoo wouldn't allow him access to it again because he couldn't prove it was his. It was ridiculous.
posted by HopperFan at 6:49 PM on September 9, 2010

Thanks for attempting to help, but my otherwise tech-rubbish Dad seems to have sussed it out himself. Go Father!
posted by djstig at 3:16 PM on September 10, 2010 [1 favorite]