Things you can do to mitigate the email problem

There will be a time when questioning PN and the failure can be done but for now people need advice on how to help themselves. Hotbalck suggested the following:

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A simple first step that I've just recommended to a friend is to setup a free gmail account. Then have all mail from their PlusNet address forwarded to this and advise contacts to use their new address. After a number of months they can then switch of forwarding and forget about their old address.

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I'll add that gMail is now free and you don't need an invitation to open an account: gMail Link. You can also use Hotmail or Yahoo mail if you prefer. gMail and Hotmail allow you to also use the accounts to download from your normal pop3 server like PN's although setting up forwarding is just as easy.

To find out how to set-up forwarding from PN or to do anything else with it see this link. You can also set-up different email addresses and set-up spam filtering etc. on the portal. Do what is necessary and meets your need.

I would also urge you to change your password on the portal but only after you have done an online virus test (Trendmicro Housecall) or run a virus scan on your machine first. To do so follow this :

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Purely as a precaution we advise customers to change their account password by visiting our website https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=change_password&s=0 Please note if you change your account password this will need to be updated in your router or modem as well as your browser and email software.

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This is because:

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Your default mailbox password is the same as your account password. Any additional mailboxes that you have setup may be setup with different passwords depending on what you suggest.

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If someone has managed to gain access to your username or password they would be able to login as you and thereby also see your home address and telephone number. This is a precautionary measure as PN do not currently believe that this information has been compromised.

I would urge anyone that can contribute to this thread with more help to do so ASAP.

Edited by rsharma (Tue 15-May-07 18:48:09)

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Purely as a precaution we advise customers to change their account password

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I would also suggest that the passwords for all email accounts are changed as well.

I'd just add that Google has a basic guide to switching here which can be used in conjunction with details on how to setup redirection from PlusNet's support pages.

Please be aware that this will not stop spam. You will still receive the same messages at your new email address (as they are all redirected). What it will do is enable you to move to using a new email address that is not 'known' by spammers as many PlusNet addresses now are. In this way once you've transferred fully to using the new address you can stop the redirection and reduce the spam you receive.

If going to the trouble of setting up a new email account, why not setup two! One for personal email and one to use for signing up to newsletters, forums or those silly emails from friends that are sent to 2000 people with a picture of a cat smiling etc. Nothing will ever stop spam completely but there are steps that can be taken to reduce it's impact. Hopefully others can provide tips in this thread.

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one to use for signing up to newsletters, forums or those silly emails from friends

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I regulary make use of a disposable email address for sites that insist on giving them an email address for verification or site that I am unsure of. Here is the link: http://www.pookmail.com/

You enter your email on a website as [email protected] and then you can go to the above link and enter that 'anything' username to check your emails. They will be automatically deleted after 24 hours. Do not use it where privacy is required etc. as anyone can read the email since it doesn't need a password or setting up an account. More information on the site.

I would also recommend something like spamfighter for those using Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail (OE in Vista). It works by checking with a master database and moving mail into a seperate spam folder. It is possible to black and whitelist mail. Mail is only declared spam if similar is reported by a number of peole and my false positive rate is low. In my case all the spam I have received through my F9 account has been correctly labelled as spam where relevant. BTW it is free for personal use as well.

I don't know about Gmail but in hotmail I use the Custom Filters,
add a filter like "pills" and if it's in the subject i redirect it straight into the junk folder.

At first takes a while, keeping adding new words, but had my hotmail account 10 years and hardly get any junk.

The recommendation to change the password only applies if the user logged in to the webmail server during the "incident" on 9th May. At the time of writing, we haven't been told what time period on 9th May.

See this link for confirmation of this from PlusNet

I also know about Magic Mail Monitor and K9 Spam filter (both free also).

The Service Status say's

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We became aware of an attack on Wednesday 9th May 2007 and immediately took our Webmail service offline to secure the platform.

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It doesn't actually say for how long this vulnerability existed, so it would be prudent to change your password regardless.

I think it's also time the Plusnet changed the accepted passwords that can be used, 5-8 characters - lowercase - starting with a number - it doesn't allow for very strong passwords.