Saturday, August 13, 2011

Ignore e-mail from me

for a little while, unless it sounds very obviously like me. In particular don't click links.

AOL has been hacked; I don't know how long that will last. There's all kinds of potential badness from this, but I don't know exactly what to expect. I did change my password, but don't expect that to make a difference, as the hackers can presumably read the new password as easily as they could the old.

Am accepting recommendations if anybody knows of any secure good free e-mail services. (I am NOT interested in GMail, however.)


6 comments:

Autumn Belle said...

So sad to hear about this happening to you. Hope everything gets sorted out soon! Last month I received a notification from Nuffnang Malaysia stating that it's computer system has been hacked and advising us to change our passwords. Now, I have so many passwords for the accounts I need to exist in cyberspace, I wonder how to remember all of them. I get very exasperated whenever I am asked to change my password with no guarantee of better security. If a bank officer ask me for password, I'll tell him, I prefer to speak to a live person.

I am using ymail and hotmail besides gmail. Didn't like windows live mail. No problem with hotmail since 1998.

mr_subjunctive said...

Autumn Belle:

Well, apparently it's over now. I'd heard about it from BoingBoing.net, but I would have thought something fishy was going on anyway, because I had a spam e-mail from someone this morning who I haven't talked to in years. I've changed my e-mail twice, and the page that BoingBoing linked to, that they said had been hacked, is displaying differently, so I guess AOL has resolved things. It's hard to be sure, though, because there's very little information about what happened or what it means (the BoingBoing comments are mostly jokes about how AOL is dumb[1]). This has apparently happened a number of times, to a number of e-mail providers, which I guess is why you're supposed to change your passwords regularly.

As far as keeping track of the passwords goes, I have mine written down near the computer. The computer never goes anywhere, nobody ever comes over, and it's not as if any of the passwords I use belong to multi-million-dollar bank accounts anyway.

-

[1] I'm aware, but all I need it to do is not cost anything and send e-mail, and AOL mail has fit that bill for nine years now. So.

Paul said...

Twitter is a vindictive bitch, huh?!

mr_subjunctive said...

Paul:

Looks like.

Pat said...

I have had hotmail accounts since it was owned by Indians and have never had any problems except they keep changing the look and giving me vastly more storage space than I will ever use.

CelticRose said...

Check to see if your ISP provides you with email service. Mine (Cox) gives me up to 10 email addresses free with my internet.