[darkpuppet]

sometimes being vigilant doesn't work..

For one reason or another, my windows live account's password was changed on me today, and my e-mail is yet unaccessible.

If you had me on your MSN contact list you may want to add me back in... as my contacts list is empty.

Not sure if it was a hacker, but this is my primary personal e-mail account, so if anything got lost, I'll definitely be looking for legal advice in the matter.

Edit, I'd love to rant more on this, but I'm trying to deal with all the lost s**t.... expect more rant later.

[NefCanuck]

Oh hell, you didn't save your emails to your PC? :blink:

In that case you may be SOL, esp. if you were thinking of holding them responsible for your email's dissapearance, as the Terms Of Service in a nutshell are "Hey we provide the service, but make no guarantees as to the availability and / or reliability of the service, use at your own risk"

I'm on an ancient Sympatico email account and use Outlook '03 for all my emails, its not perfect either, but at least I can, in theory, if my .PST file goes splat, recreate it from backups (I say in theory, because while I was sucessful the one time I had to do it, I read many horror stories about people who aren't :ph34r:)

NefCanuck

[darkpuppet]

I download my e-mails regularily.. I'm just not sure if I lost anything.

I definitely want to know if any other accounts are at risk due to this, and if it's because of their shitty security policy, I'm definitely going after them.

Because, basically, if you want to maintain any of your sympatico mail services, you're forced through MSN. That wasn't my choice, and I can't even get decent service to resolve the issue or figure out what the hell is going on.

I only ever log in via two machines, both behind a firewall, both running antivirus, and I'm actually one of the more vigilant against malware and spyware.

If they got in via a dictionary attack or something like that, I'd be surprised...

Of course, the more I think about it, the more likely it's just a software screwup (like they deleted my e-mail account and disassociated it from the service by accident).

And if that's the case, I'll be fine with a free month of highspeed, but if not....

Terms of service don't protect them from negligence.

[NOS2Go4Me]

Same thing happened to my G/F, but we managed to catch it in time, change the password and then changed it again along with all her security questions. It was funny, she was on her laptop, right in front of me and then it told her she was signed in at another location.

WTF!!!

So we logged back in again, confirming the password hadn't been changed... and then changed it. I also swept the laptop for keyloggers and such.

[NefCanuck]

darkpuppet,Sep 26 2008, 09:39 AM Wrote:I download my e-mails regularily.. I'm just not sure if I lost anything.

I definitely want to know if any other accounts are at risk due to this, and if it's because of their s***ty security policy, I'm definitely going after them.

Because, basically, if you want to maintain any of your sympatico mail services, you're forced through MSN.  That wasn't my choice, and I can't even get decent service to resolve the issue or figure out what the hell is going on.

I only ever log in via two machines, both behind a firewall, both running antivirus, and I'm actually one of the more vigilant against malware and spyware. 

If they got in via a dictionary attack or something like that, I'd be surprised...

Of course, the more I think about it, the more likely it's just a software screwup (like they deleted my e-mail account and disassociated it from the service by accident).

And if that's the case, I'll be fine with a free month of highspeed, but if not....

Terms of service don't protect them from negligence.
[right][snapback]273333[/snapback][/right]

When it comes to getting issues resolved through Symcrapico, I learned long ago, one must have the patience of a Zen master and the tenancity of a pitbull on uppers <_<

I fully agree DP regarding the TOS, but the trick is, how do you prove that they were negligent in the operation of their equipment?

It could be an error in the software that they themselves had purchased from another vendor, for which it's very hard to hold them liable for unless they knew about the possible shortcoming and continued to operate the defective software without advising their users as to the possibility of data loss.

That's just an example, but there are many ways to weasel out of something like this (That's the only bad part of my job... learning what tricks will be used against you, if push comes to shove <_<)

NefCanuck

[darkpuppet]

I'm not concerned about the software bugs or issues, but their ability to protect my data that I'm paying money for after the fact.

S#!t happens, I can deal with that. But having to wait 24 hours or more for action to be taken on a possible identity theft just isn't cool.

I did my due dilligence to contact Microsquish as soon as I found out the problem and I also notified sympatico by every means accessible to me, and that took 2 hours of my time digging around for the answers and info to just contact customer support.

[mo_focus]

maybe an ex wanted to get back at you????