email and bt account hacked. all phone lines closed!

[skavan]

Hi,

I'm writing this on behalf of my 87 year old mother in law.

Both her bt internet email (xxxx@btinternet.com) and her main BT master account have been hacked and the passwords changed. They are actively sending phishing emails to everyone. God knows what else they are doing.

The crooks have setup their emails as the recovery emails to send a pin - so there is no way to get the accounts back.
It's after 9pm and it seems there is no one to talk to, to (a) Freeze her master and email account and (b) start a recovery process.

Any ideas? She lives alone and is medically dependent on a Lifeline system and just returned from hospital after a Heart Attack. This is causing her enormous stress as you can imagine.

[Katie_B]

Hello @skavan. 

Welcome to the community. 

I am concerned to hear what your mother in law has experienced. 

I would love to see if I can help with this. 

When you have a moment please check your community inbox. 

Speak soon, 

Katie

[skavan · Accepted solution]

Thanks. Mum in Law camped on the phone this morning with BT and it seems to be cleared up.
Lot's of lessons:

1. Enable 2FA at all times (BT should force it)
2. BT support closing down at 8pm for this stuff is not accpetable. Bad guys aren't sleeping.
3. BT online chat was broken throughout the process.

This forum was great. Thanks.

Suresh

[garybs29]

Srrange as support is until 9pm not 8pm. Ultimatley though it costs more to have staff later as unsociable hours etc so it's a catch 22 situation

[skavan]

9pm is regular. 8pm is fraud etc...

But there is a deeper point here.

1. BT is not a startup. It's a multi-billion-dollar company.
2. Fraud (and related) is this era's big, present problem. It doesn't sleep.
3. Support for products like these, with issues like these, should match usage. Customers don't stop using email at 9pm. Crooks don't stop work at 9 pm. Every other global, multi-billion-dollar $ company uses offshore, follow-the-sun support. The Manila or Bangalore team picks up at time Z, and so on. I know, because I have run a bunch.
4. To reduce the cost footprint, you invest in triage. A lot of issues (including fraud) can be triaged early. Either with level-1 employees or increasingly with AI. The goal is not perfection, but dealing with the 99% using tech and human resource sensibly.
5. The BT email platform is woefully outdated compared to gmail, hotmail etc... There is no value added. BT should enter a deal with one of them to migrate everyone (their accounts, history and so on) so they don't have to invest gazillions is dev and fraud etc... Yes that will be a $1bn deal. Once. But will save gazillions a year. Customers keep their email addresses etc... but under the hood, one of the big boys run it.

my 2c.

[gg30340]

@skavan 

Your comments and how you would run the email service will probably all be academic at some point in the not too distant future. 

Many ISPs no longer provide an email service to their customers. In October 2022 BT stopped their email service to new customers and to existing customers who prior to that date had not already set up a BTMail account. 

BT will no doubt follow suit with the other ISP's and stop its email service to all its customers who presently have BTMail email accounts so you might want to consider getting your mother an email account with gmail or Outlook.Com, which is what Hotmail is now called, sooner rather than later.

[skavan]

100% agree. Sorta what I meant to say.
My wife was a hotmail customer since the beginning. Somewhere on the way -- it all migrated to ms infrastructure - but her email address, inbox etc...was maintained.