Bellsouth email access

Not without your password and security questions. Otherwise, what would be the point?

Thanks for that.

The point would be that people frequently type in the wrong password and get locked out.
Also, people may also forget their security questions or not type exactly what they typed 20 years ago when they set it up.

In those instances, you can usually talk to the company, validate you are who you say you are and get your access restored.

In this instance, they are saying you can't do that. They are claiming that there is no back-end way to reset my password for me. If you can't see that is ridiculous then fair enough.

Thanks again for your input though.

Hey @colinferguson, we know just how important it is to stay connected to your email mailbox.

Password reset terms were updated to ensure your accounts remain secure. Verbal password resets are no longer an option, however, we are more than happy to look through some alternative options that may be available for you. 

So that we can take a closer look at this with you, we will need to speak privately. Check the Direct Message inbox in the top right corner of your screen. We'll be sending you a DM shortly.

We look forward to connecting with you.

Tanatswa, AT&T Community Specialist

@colinferguson  It's not that there's no way to do that, they just finally found someone with more than two brain cells who realized what a giant security risk that was. 

Understand that Yahoo/AT&T email accounts suffered a big database breach in August 2021.  The hackers immediately tried to brute force their way into these accounts.  Then apparently some realized that you could call up AT&T and give them the email address and then claim you had no other means to authenticate yourself as the rightful owner, AT&T would just hand over a temp password.

We see evidence of that every day with the hackers locking down the accounts they now "own" and causing all sorts or problems for the real owner.

Very Good, except ATT bought over my bellsouth account and they linked it to my att account 

I never did any of that. So they know I'm the same person. Or are you saying they just randomly linked bellsouth emails to new att accounts?

Anyway, I was trying to access some important info, and it appears nobody can help, so no need to discuss further.

thanks for your help tho.

I have no idea how any of the linking works.  But since you're not open to further discussions I'll refrain from giving you another avenue to try.

@tonydi 

classic - I came on asking for help, you sent two comments telling me how it was my own fault, and now suddenly you were about to solve my issue if I'd only kept chatting.

as they say in London, leave it out guvnor. 

First off, I posted one comment.  You have a problem if anything I said looks like I'm blaming you.  I explained that they stopped handing out resets and gave you the background on why.  You're not featured in anything I said.  This is all of AT&T's making.

Then you got snippy and said you didn't want any help.  And now you've (apparently) doubled down on that.

my bad on that one.....I thought you were the same person that posted the first response.

look, I'm not here to argue with you or anyone else. I'm extremely frustrated that I've lost access to some pretty important stuff that I had in my old bellsouth email.

At this point the official dude in my DMs has said I have no chance of getting back in. I think thats astonishing TBH but there's nothing I can do.

Apologies for my original error in thinking you were the same dude that gave me the first answer which quite frankly got right up my nose.

cheers! 

No problem, I understand now.

I've advocated for AT&T to come up with some sort of system to authenticate users who are locked out and none of their info to authenticate them as the rightful owner is in their database.  Something had to go terribly wrong and that database is clearly corrupted as sometimes there are phone numbers in there that don't belong the name on the account, or secret questions that would never apply (what's the city where your spouse was born for people who have never been married).  Add to that the fact that this was all caused by lax security features on AT&T's part and it just seems they need to take some sort of extraordinary measure to make up for it.

I suggested asking the user for some of the names of people who might have emailed them, or maybe names of some of their Contacts.  Something only the true owner would know.

The bottom line is that AT&T could not care less about the Yahoo/AT&T email service and would just as soon see it all go away and they clearly care nothing about how this affects their customers.

Ok, rant off.

Hail Mary time.  Fill out the form HERE.

This will get the FCC to contact the AT&T Office of the President on your behalf.  Once the OoP people get the notice they should respond to it within 24 hrs (sometimes even on weekends) and they may be able to get things done.  Once you submit, make sure you're ready to get a call from a number that isn't familiar.  If you miss it your chances of calling back and getting a successful result goes down.

Good luck!