Closure of Legacy email accounts

I refused to pay TTs extortionate fee to retain email accounts that I've had for 20 something years (Lineone & Tiscali) and finally got round to organising my contacts using multiple accounts on my own domain.

I expected TT to do as they said they would - close the old accounts when they said they were going to but no... they still are working six months later BUT they have switched off the spam filters.

Thats just PETTY

Post deleted by Brunel

POP3 access to my ancient screaming.net e-mail account stopped on the date TT had said they were going to shut the account.

I have 4 legacy accounts that should have terminated on various dates in January & February. All are still 'active' - I sent test emails from and to all 4 just 10 minutes ago and all mails were delivered. Only one account was widely used to send mail (over a period of 20 some years) and that now receives 7 - 10 spam emails daily up from 1 or twop when the account was 'active'.

I have a couple which are still open. I assume they delayed the shut down due to being understaffed and therefore unable to deal with support queries arising from shutting down accounts.

My Tiscali POP3 also shut down about when they said it would but SMTP send still works (& is received at recipient).

Here's an email I got in Feb: https://imgur.com/lXRULBK

Two more in emails in March saying it will be closed "soon", but it's still open.

I recently checked my unused legacy lineone email account and was shocked to find that it's being used to send spam by Russian crooks!
I had a long frustrating chat with talktalk. Insofar as I don't have a talktalk account they can't close it and they also can't see the lineone account
They suggest I write a letter to their Salford office with details of my bank account and council tax bills etc etc!
This is totally bonkers.
Anyone have any suggestions as to how i can get talktalk to just close this rogue account?

..got to chat to a more helpful person today, who claims to have forwarded the case to their GDPR department. Fingers crossed...there's a LOT of dangerous looking spam going out of this account.

In reply to a post by fireants:

there's a LOT of dangerous looking spam going out of this account.

Did you change the password as a first step?

Unable to change password as don't have a TT account, just this orphan lineone email account. It seems to open with a cookie as the address says"talktalk.co.uk/mail/?check_cookie=1#" Must be some Russians have a big box of cookies somewhere!

Edited by fireants (Tue 29-Dec-20 17:04:58)

In reply to a post by fireants:

Unable to change password as don't have a TT account, just this orphan lineone email account. It seems to open with a cookie as the address says"talktalk.co.uk/mail/?check_cookie=1#" Must be some Russians have a big box of cookies somewhere!

OK thats not good

Fixed, hopefully. Somehow, the talktalk login page changed and i was able to change my password. Presumably this will end this fiasco. No thanks to talktalks useless chat agents however....
Just hope they now don't try to charge me for having an account that they should have deleted long ago.