SNET.NET email account stopped working

The the only way I ever logged into my email was through mail.yahoo.com. The day I got locked out I was trying to login on the Yahoo login page (which only had the Yahoo logo on it in the top left corner) where I entered my email and clicked on “next” to get to the screen for the password (which had both the Yahoo and AT&T logos in the top left corner), where it wasn’t recognizing my password, even though it hadn’t been changed. Doing “Forgot Password” got/gets me to an AT&T page, and resetting the password here does nothing to reset the pw for my email account, only the pw to get into the myATT site (for which, by the way, my snet.net email is my username). If I go to Yahoo’s help site: it doesn’t recognize my email address as a Yahoo account. What I’ve determined through research is that those of us with snet.net accounts that we access via Yahoo Mail still need to “authenticate” through AT&T in order to get into the accounts. This would explain why only AT&T would be able to help with a password problem, and not Yahoo.

Anyway, I’ve had many conversations with many different people at Digital Assistance on many occasions since 12/9/17, and none have been able to help. I’ve also spoken to people at the general tech support number, and people at the DSL number mentioned in the login error message. None iof them have been able to help. I even spent over 2 hours on the phone one evening with people at ConneTech (AT&T’s paid help service). At the beginning of the call they were very positive that they could resolve the issue. They couldn’t. They came back with the same response: I lost access to the email account because I no longer had an Internet account through AT&T and without that there was nothing they could do.

In the meantime I will continue to call Digital Assistance (though not as frequently), as I’ve read that some people have had problem finally resolved because they happened to get someone who happened to know what needed to be done to fix the specific problem.

Well I'm not going to give up trying.  If you take a look at the Yahoo Forums you'll see that there are probably thousands of posts there about this same problem (though perhaps nothing specific mentioned about the snet.net domain).  If my issue does get resolved, I will post.  Unfortunately, I think that when many issues get resolved many people don't give an update - they're just happy their problem was fixed, so they no longer have a need for the Forums!  I have seen comments in some posts about some things that seemed to work for people, but they don't give the specifics.  Then when I've posted asking for details, or even if I send them an personal message, there is no response. 

Losing access to an email address, particularly one that is 22 years old, is extremely stressful.  The amount of time I have needed to invest to make the necessary changes (many of which were very critical to make back in the beginning) has been unbelievable.  This has me thinking about what options there are going forward to have a back-up plan for emails so that this can never happen again.  Unfortunately, I have not yet found an answer to that question.  As I've stated, I can still see many (but not all) of my full emails on either my iPhone or iPad (I can see the headers for all, the the preview lines for many).  If the ones I can open and see the full text have links in them, the links are still active.  If they have attachments that have been fully downloaded, I can open the attachments.  The options to save these that I can see are to hit "Forward" (or "Reply") so I can copy the body of the email and paste it into a new email, a Word doc, etc., or to save each one individually as a PDF.  The procedure to to this is:  Click to Print, when you see the preview, pinch out to enlarge it, click on the box with the arrow in the top right corner, and then select an option to save.  If you save to somewhere like Files or Dropbox, it will save the email as a PDF and the name of the file will be the same as the email header/subject line (which can be edited after, if desired).  If you select to email it, it will email the PDF file to your selected mailbox, and the header on the email will be the same as the original email header/subject line.  This is very time consuming, but at least it's better than nothing.  My fear is that I may somehow lose access to what I can currently still see on my iPhone or iPad, and then I'll be totally out of luck.  Not only are there emails with very important information (because who thinks, in this day and age, to print off copies of emails and save the paper?), but there are some very sentimental emails from people I will never be able to hear from again.  If I can't see the body of the emails, there's no way for me to get them because they can't be downloaded from the server.

But the bottom line to this:  I know that the emails are out there on a Yahoo server somewhere, and I would think that someone should be able to get access back for me.  Heck, if I was under investigation for something, the FBI would certainly be able to gain access to my emails!

I sympathize with everyone.  I, too, am in CT but my issue has now been resolved.  Spent a number of hours working through it all yesterday.  Never bothered to call support because I've always found it a waste of time.  It took a while to figure out how to tell the difference between the two yahoo accounts.  ATT is making this more confusing because they still appear to be using Yahoo.

I can only tell you what I did and maybe this might help some of you.  I knew my yahoo email address even though I never used it for email but I did use it to log in sometimes so maybe that's the difference.  I believe that is the key.

I do remember many years ago being told to link the snet.net and yahoo account.  I truly don't remember if it was during the snet days or the sbcglobal days or att days.  I really think the linked accounts is what is causing all the problems.If you can't find or don't remember ever having a linked yahoo account, try this link to see if you can get your unknown yahoo email id.

@manddstock: Thank you so much for sharing all of this detailed information of what worked for you! Hopefully others in this same dismal situation will happen upon your post and find it to be just the information they need so they can figure out how to fix their problem.  

I have the same thing when I login to Yahoo Mail where in the top right if I click on my name I can see my current account and the account I can’t access. For me it’s almost like a cruel joke someone is trying to play on me: “It’s here, only you can’t access it.”

Thank you again for all your time offering the help you could!

Thank you for sharing 

Your email threads have been very helpful, not in resolving the issue but in the fact that we now know why all of a sudden my husband is unable to access his snet.net email.  We can still see what is there, but in spite of entering a new password as it requested, it doesn't recognize him. Made at least 5 or 6 phone calls to no avail. Mine, also an sent.net is still okay, but will start the onerous task of switching to another address tomorrow!  Thank you all again!!! I may write a letter to the New Haven Register, just to get the word out there! We live in CT, just like you all

@TULIPTREE: My understanding is that switching a WORKING email account to another one is fairly easy. i’ve heard that some accounts can be set up to automatically forward messages from the old account to the new, and some even have a message from the old account telling those who contact it what your new email address is. I’ve also heard that there is a way to transfer emails from one account to another. Of course the key here is that the account you’re switching from has to be accessible!

As for contacting the NH Register, someone suggested that I do that (they also suggested TV news channels) - news media love diving into a story and can sometimes get action. I was told to contact the FCC, but this is not the kind of issue they will handle, but our Attorney General’s office may be able to help. I have a very long, thorough letter that’s almost finished, but I have not decided who I should send it to: The news outlets, the Attorney General, or the President of AT&T and all of the top executives, including the person in charge of investor relations (basically the person who handles the highest level of complaints). Maybe I’ll send it to all of these places/people.

Those of us who have no way to access our accounts are truly victims and need to get the attention of the proper people who can do whatever it is that needs to be done to get our access back.

I’ve not had access to my account since December 9th. Though I’ve already made over 200 changes to places that had my snet.net email address, something new crops up almost every day that turns something that used to be easy into a time-consuming task. On top of this, I gave emails that contain important information or have important attachments, and I have no way of getting the information contained in these emails.

We all need to keep each other informed as to what we’re doing and what has worked (if anything), or what only leads to a dead end.

Update on how I got the problem accessing my 22 year-old snet.net account (and associated sub-accounts) resolved: The problem started around 4 p.m. on December 9, 2017, when I got locked out of my accounts and no one could get me back in. Read back through the posts in this thread if you’re interested in the details.

At the beginning of April I finally sent a very long, detailed letter to the Attorney General’s office here in CT. 2 weeks later I got a response from one of the assistant Attorney Generals who was assigned my case. Two days later I was contacted by people from two separate areas of AT&T telling me that they were working on getting my email accounts restored, but that they couldn’t guarantee any of the folders/emails would still be there. Within one week, after a few more calls from AT&T technicians, not only were my snet.net email accounts back in service, but all of the emails were there in all of the folders! I can’t stress how happy I was with this outcome.

So the bottom line: If AT&T tells you that there’s nothing that can be done to get you back into your account, if you go through certain channels it’s interesting how they can do what they tell you can’t be done, and do it quite quickly!