Email account hacked

[Atheryn]

Someone with an AZ ip-address gained access to my email account today, and sent a spam message to people on my contact list.  It looks like there are other people in the same predicament today, and considering how careful I am with online security, I'm wondering if AT&T's database has been compromised, and not my computer.

Anyway, I have followed the instructions on the myAT&T website, I have changed my password, I have added a security seal, and changed my security questions.  I signed out of myAT&T and tried logging back in with my new password - it worked.  I then tried my old password - it failed, as it should.

BUT when I go to the www.att.net email website and attempt to log in with my new password, the page simply refreshes and displays, in red font, "Please enter your password".  If I try to log in with my old password, it logs in without any problems.

So, why is my old password still working on www.att.net?  That's the whole reason I changed my password, so my old password wouldn't work anymore.  Can someone please help me to resolve this.

[Computer-Joe]

---

Atheryn wrote:

Someone with an AZ ip-address gained access to my email account today, and sent a spam message to people on my contact list.  It looks like there are other people in the same predicament today, and considering how careful I am with online security, I'm wondering if AT&T's database has been compromised, and not my computer.

Anyway, I have followed the instructions on the myAT&T website, I have changed my password, I have added a security seal, and changed my security questions.  I signed out of myAT&T and tried logging back in with my new password - it worked.  I then tried my old password - it failed, as it should.

BUT when I go to the www.att.net email website and attempt to log in with my new password, the page simply refreshes and displays, in red font, "Please enter your password".  If I try to log in with my old password, it logs in without any problems.

So, why is my old password still working on www.att.net?  That's the whole reason I changed my password, so my old password wouldn't work anymore.  Can someone please help me to resolve this.

---

Ok, first off, a spammer does not need access to your online account or your computer to send spam to your contacts using your address. Quite often your address and contact list are harvested from someone elses computer that you've sent email to who happens to have a virus or malware. As far as pinpointing the sender to an Arizona IP address, that's seldom the end of the trail. Normally the sending IP address is spoofed, or if it is accurate, the sending computer has a spam-bot (virus) and the emails are sent without the knowledge of the computer's owner.

For the password issue, it's possible that the password you change was for your ATT Access ID not your User ID. The ATT Access ID is used for accessing your billing and services, the User ID is used for accessing your email.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
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I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
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There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
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“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Atheryn]

Let me just clarify.

I found out my account was hacked yesterday because I received the spam email at my work email address, from my personal AT&T email account. When I logged into my AT&T account on www.att.net, there was a notification stating that my account was accessed suspiciously from AZ at 2.28pm, based on the IP address.  I never assumed the hacker was actually in AZ.

As for the password, I followed AT&T's instructions for changing the email account password. According to their instructions and all of their "change password" links, the password for email and AT&T access ID are one and the same.  If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me.  In any case, I still need help on this.

[Computer-Joe]

---

Atheryn wrote:

Let me just clarify.

I found out my account was hacked yesterday because I received the spam email at my work email address, from my personal AT&T email account. When I logged into my AT&T account on www.att.net, there was a notification stating that my account was accessed suspiciously from AZ at 2.28pm, based on the IP address.  I never assumed the hacker was actually in AZ.

As for the password, I followed AT&T's instructions for changing the email account password. According to their instructions and all of their "change password" links, the password for email and AT&T access ID are one and the same.  If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me.  In any case, I still need help on this.

---

Your user account/email ID should not be the same as your ATT Access ID for this very reason. If someone can access your user account they can also access the bill payment site which can have a lot of personal info about you that can be used to steal your identity.

When you first went to the "My Account" site where you can view/pay your bill and add/remove services they should have prompted you to create your ATT Access ID. During the process you would have been informed to not use your main user account ID.

I take it that you have your work address in the contacts list for your personal account, are they similar, but with different domains, like you@att.net and you@work.com ?

Was the "notice" you received in the form of an email, or was it some sort of pop-up?

Did you log into your personal account from your work computer as soon as you got the spam message there?

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Atheryn]

I'm not talking about the User ID and AT&T access ID being the same - they are very different.  But the passwords for each are the same - there is no option to have different passwords, not that I can find anyway.

According to this article on att.com, to change the email account password, I need to sign on to myAT&T, click Profile, locate "Set Personal Password", key in my old password, type in a new password, verify the new password, and save changes.  That is exactly what I did. 

The same article (linked above), also states:

"If you have an AT&T Access ID, changing your email password automatically changes your AT&T Access ID password to the same password."

I have done exactly what AT&T says needs to be done to change my email password, but the change has only affected my AT&T Access ID password - it has not changed my email account password.

To answer your other questions:

1) No, my work email address and AT&T email addresses are not similar.  They are completely different.  My work email address is on my contact list.

2) The notice I received was a notification message.  When you log into your email account at www.att.net, and view the inbox, there is a "bell" icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.  If you hover your cursor over it, it says "Notifications".  When I signed onto my email account yesterday, the notification icon was a different color,with a "1" beside it, indicating that I had 1 unread notification.  When I cicked on that, it informed me that my account was accessed suspiciously from an AZ IP address.

3) Yes, I logged into my personal AT&T account as soon as I received the spam message at my work email address.

Please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

[Computer-Joe]

Sounds as if you did eveerything correctly.

You can send a private message to the escalation team at ATT Customer Care and someone will get in touch with you within a couple days to help you get a resolution to your problems.

To check for their reply, click the little blue envelope.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[kylehall]

My email account was hacked as well...and more importantly, it was hacked on AT&T or Yahoos servers.  I NEVER download my emails to my PC.  I always interact with my email via a browser connection to the AT&T email. 

I've searched and searched in the AT&T support and I can find no way to inform AT&T Tech Support or Security that they've been hacked.

Any suggestion?

Kyle

[URDRWHO]

I just posted with the same problem. My e-mail was hacked yesterday. ATT tech told me a lot of people are having the same problem and I should not try to send anything from the account for up to 36 hours. The engineers are working on the fix.

To me, if many people are having the same issue, it sounds like ATT/Yahoo was hacked and things were rather severely compromised.

[carlover61]

My account was hackede yesterday about 2 AM in the morning. By 7:20 AM, I heard from a friend that is an IT guy in a local retirement community and he told me that Yahoo/ATT had been hacked. I changed my password and I noticed this morning that more spamail went out at 2:00 AM. I too cannot figure out why AT& T is so hush hush. Think I would be more open with my customers.  This must be a bigger issue than they want to admit. 

[grtplains]

My account was compromised on 1/30/12, started receiving hundreds of undeliverable email notices, took 2 days to get my password changed (most convoluted password change process I've ever seen).  Stopped receiving the notices after pw change. Today, when I try to log in I receive this message "You no longer have access to your AT&T Yahoo! account xxxxxxx@att.net
because your AT&T Yahoo! Internet services have been suspended due to violation of the AT&T Yahoo! Terms of Service."  Interesting as I rarely use this account and a blind man can see that the problem is on AT&T/YAHOO's end.  They are apparently trying to make the customer appear the culprit.  Make's one wonder concerning the CHARACTER and SECURITY any of ATT/YAHOO sites/accounts. 

[jeremyandnevard]

     ATTENTION AT&T...yes my fellow duped and vexed e-mail users...I TOO have the dreaded at&T / yahoo combo.  Mine froze up yesterday (1/31/2013) at ohhh..bout' 4 pm eastern time. With a pitiful (yet not entirely surprised) sigh, went about my biz, and tried to get at email again today.  NOPE.  Sooo...when i called the tech guy (who was mighty friendly but i'm thinkin' not from my hometown or any OTHER town in the usa)...he put me on hold for awhile, and then took control of my computer. well....SOMEONE had to take control of the darn thing.  I proceeded to amusingly watch him cursor his evil lil' heart out all OVER my page, and verbally waffle so fast my neighbors became dizzy. HE couldn't find anything bad.  NOOOOO. 

     I was put on hold once more whilst he conferred with his esteemed techie collegue.This astonishing and yo-yoing behaviour went on for a good 2 HRS.

   Goodness me it sure IS at&t/yahoo, and i figure it's a BIG-UN allrighty. HOW do i know this?  Well, I'm here to tell you all, that the internet/email service from...oh you know who by now...used to be ...um...not all that bad.  REALLY.  It wasn't until they partnered with the dark side...i mean yahoo...that things truly went amok.

 And the most glaring reason for believing the fault lies with....uh...THEM?   HERE GOES.

    My "helper" finally re-appeared to give me this welcomed and "liar,liar pants on fire" NEWS. 

This bastion of good cust. serv. told me that....it's CERTAINLY NOT the flawless AT&T that's responsible.  heck no.  nor is it that outstanding YAHOO.  nope.  it's stooopid YOU, and your OBVIOUSLY sub-standard computer that is at fault.

     He THEN attempted to SELL me the services of ANOTHER techie at a ridiculous price...who would of course look into this FURTHER, and might be of more HELP.  When I didn't bite, this swell guy advised that I get on FIREFOX while the gettin' on was good. 

     I predict that there will soon be a gazillion calls to them, tons more waffling on their part, and lots of posts here...if folks can FIND their way here of course.  SHAME ON YOU at&t, for your complete lack of a moral code, backbone,
and your not so attractive demeaning view of us.  thanks for listening guys. xoxo  ps.  may i just tell at&t....WE'RE NO DOPES...YOU DOPES !!!    sorry. 

[ChrisBaldwin]

Had the same problem on the 30th.  Checked email at home, went to work and found SPAM sent from my sbcglobal.net account.  Have had the SBC email for years.   Yesterday 2-7-13, it will not accept the password which has also been the same for years.  I believe this is an att / yahoo issue, since it is not really clear who administers the SBCglobal.net address.  All I ever get is go to the website, and read about how to change your password.  I get promted for security questions, but it never even shows them for me to answer.

Await response from customer care to help me at least delete the account, though that has been my e-mail account for 9 years.  Would hate to loose it and I have information being sent to it, so now I worry about theft etc.

[mlschelpat]

Today, 2/8/13, my ATT dot NET email name was spoofed and junk emails were sent to contacts that were removed from my contact list about a year ago. My account had been hacked before, I changed my password and ran virus scans (none found) and I removed every entry from my contact list and stored them instead in a spread sheet where I now copy/paste names into my new email "to" line. The only entry in my contact list is aaaaa @ aaa (without spaces) so if someone hacked into my account and sent spam to everyone in my contact list I would know it because I would get an "undeliverable" email back because that "aaa" name is invalid. That never happened today. Emails were not sent from within my account. The "sent" folder has no current entries BUT emails were sent to my old contact list addresses with my email name as the "from" sender. Either YAHOO still has a copy of my old contact list cached somewhere and it was hacked or someone has their own copy of my old contact list (I doubt that). ATT email was okay before it was outsourced to YAHOO.  AT&T should now be worried about their respected name being tarnished by YAHOO's security problems and AT&T should have a helpdesk person that email users could talk to.

[ATTCustomerCare]

Hi!  I just sent you a private message in regards to your concerns. Thanks! ^CathyW

[ATTCustomerCare]

ChrisBaldwin ,

We have recieved your private message and will have a manager contact you shortly.

Thanks -Ray, AT&T Social Media Manager