This topic

delete old btinternet email address

mikedesign — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:21:58 GMT

I have an old btinternet.com email address that is no longer used by myself, it turns out this email address has been in data leaks etc and I'm not exactly sure if something dodgy is going on but I have to reset the password a lot lately , I would like to delete it and close the account ,it has been around for about 20 years

BT support say they cannot do it as i have no services or broadband , its the free basic account you get given when you no longer use BT services

any one else try and shed some light on it? or managed this

Re: delete old btinternet email address

licquorice — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:38:11 GMT

If you stop accessing it, it will get deleted after 90 days.

As long as you are not using it, it doesn't really matter whether it is deleted or not.

Re: delete old btinternet email address

mikedesign — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:50:58 GMT

we aren't sure if its being accessed elsewhere I get 2fa codes sent to my phone recently and don't access it at all as a rule it was a zombie, it hasn't been accessed by me in the last 2 years so not sure how true the 90 day thing is , just recently weird stuff has been occurring and it was forgotten about until then

Re: delete old btinternet email address

Alex_H — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 10:04:49 GMT

Hi @mikedesign,

Thanks for visiting the BT Community 🙂

It is correct that we cannot manually delete a Basic BT E-mail, only Standard or Premium, but it would be deleted automatically after 150 days of there being no logins, you can find the full details of that here What is the usage policy for BT Email? | BT Help

If you believe the e-mail had been compromised, if they had logged in that would have prevented the e-mail address being deleted for inactivity. As long as you have re-secured the account by changing to a new password and then choose not to login again, the e-mail address should be deleted after 150 days.

Alex

Re: delete old btinternet email address

SirLoin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 01:22:40 GMT

This seems crazy. Many older people use these accounts and are vulnerable to hacking. I know someone who has been hacked so I added 2FA, but the hacker is still on the account and won't ever be thrown out.

Is it correct that BT's only answer is don't log in for almost 5 months and they will then be thrown out? How much damage will be done in that time?

Btinternet email hacking vulnerability

SirLoin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 01:50:17 GMT

The btinternet.com has two major vulnerabilities that could and should be implemented by BT that means, once accessed, hackers are free to continue.

Firstly, once an email is hacked you can change passwords, add 2FA etc. but it will never log someone out who is logged in. Therefore once a hacker is in you can't stop them from adding forwarding addresses etc.

Secondly, if you have a basic BT internet.com account, you can't even delete that account. The guidance is don't log in for 150 days (almost 5 months) and the email will be automatically deleted. I don't know if this is actually logins or whether it stays active as long as they are using it, but giving free reign to a hacker for 5 months is nuts.

Many older people use these accounts and are vulnerable to hacking, with no way to log out from all active sessions or close the account promptly. This will then lead to more emails being sent to more vulnerable people, continuing the chain of misery.

BT needs to get this fixed as a matter of priority, more from a moral obligation than anything else.

Re: delete old btinternet email address

gg30340 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:36:36 GMT

@SirLoin

How do you know the hacker is still on the account?

Assuming the email account is sending spam or phishing emails are you sure that the email address is not now being spoofed order to sent spam etc.

If that is happening have you check any of the email headers that have been received from the account to see if it is coming from the hacked account or if it has been spoofed?

Re: delete old btinternet email address

SirLoin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:09:57 GMT

When we delete the forwarding address, it gets added back on. We got a notification saying it has been removed then when we log in again it has reappeared.

We have been on the phone with the security team and it is a known problem with btinternet emails. Yahoo, apple, Google and Outlook etc all give you an option to revoke tokens on all sessions (if you click on anything it asks you to go through the password process again), bt doesn't do this.

If you have a basic account, which most people do as they were moved on to BT, you don't even have the option to delete your account. Instead it will be deleted after 150 days of not being logged in to

Re: delete old btinternet email address

licquorice — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:57:25 GMT

Did you change the email password, if not the hacker will just be able to configure the forwarding as fast as you remove it.

The only people on Basic Mail are those that do not have a BT broadband account. BT customers have Standard mail. Premium mail is just the name given to Standard mail for non BT customers paying to keep Standard mail.

I get heartily sick of folks on here equating age as a reason for not being tech savvy and susceptible to hackers, it has nothing to do with age.

Re: delete old btinternet email address

SirLoin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:28:25 GMT

Yes the password was changed as well as changing the 2FA method.

With regards to the account, BT forced them off BT broadband and on to EE when they took over EE. They didn't have a choice. Therefore they automatically lost the option for standard and premium options unless you pay for it.

I know not all elderly people are tech illiterate, but as a fraction, many of them are less tech savvy. It is partly proven by the fact that when I initially deleted the forwarding, many elderly people were replying to the obviously dodgy email, whilst the younger people contacted via WhatsApp, text, phone etc.

It still does not excuse the poor quality of the BT systems that once you are hacked, there seems to be no way to stop access to the account. There was a 90 minute call to BT yesterday and another scheduled today to try and resolve it. As they said they couldn't log them out.

Re: delete old btinternet email address

licquorice — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:42:47 GMT

Wrong on 3 accounts, nobody is forced from BT to EE, it is a choice albeit there may be pressure to move.

In choosing to migrate to EE from BT, the mail account remains as Standard, not Basic

As @gg30340 has already pointed out, the suspect emails purportedly from your address are extremely likely to have originated from a different address with your address spoofed. Once a contact list has been stolen it can't be unstolen. If a burglar stole a paper address book, nothing can prevent them using it.

Re: delete old btinternet email address

gg30340 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:36:39 GMT

BT customers were not forced off BT to EE, there was a choice. Those that migrated to EE Broadband they did not "automatically lost the option for standard and premium options unless you pay for it"

They retained their BTMail email accounts as standard email accounts and they are managed through their MyBT with their BTID.

If that did not happen they should have contacted BT and asked that the email account be returned to standard.

You can check what type of email account they have by logging onto their MYBT and going to Your Products then Email, Manage. It should show as "Standard".

Regarding your assumption about elderly people. Most "younger" people use Whats app text etc because that is what they choose to do, not because they are more tech-savy. It has been proven that they are prone to be less careful when it comes to protecting their identity etc than older people.

As regards the problem when the email account was hacked and you made the changes that you did, prior to doing that did you carry out scans for malware, keystroke loggers and programs that allow remote access to the device. If you did did you do that when the device was in safe mode?

Or before changing the password etc did you try changing the password and deleting the forwarding address on a different device per chance there was malware etc on the persons device?

If you have a look through past posts you will see many people complaining that they used to be able to logon to their email account at the start of the day and it would stay logged on all day but since BT had implemented an update to the system to log users out after a period of inactivity they were now being logged out and now have to relog back in numerous times per day. If I recall this was in sometime in 2024.

As far as I am aware that is still the case that after a period of inactivity the email account is logged out.

You did not answer if you have checked any of the headers of emails that recipients who received spam email from the hacked account received to see where the email originated from? This is important information to establish if the hacker still has access to the email account or not.

EDIT: Webmail Logging out.

Keep me logged in - BT Community

Re: Btinternet email hacking vulnerability

Ali_A — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:59:48 GMT

Hi @SirLoin

Thanks for raising your concerns. We take customer security very seriously, and have steps in place to keep customers details and account safe. Which is why we employ features such as Two-Factor Authentication, etc.

Good news though, changing your password will automatically sign you out of all active sessions. If you need help with this just visit Need to change or reset your BT Email password?

You can also find the steps how to delete your email account immediately at How do I close or delete a BT Email account?

For your peace of mind, changing Two-Factor Authentication details will trigger a notification to the original contact details.

Ali