BT dumps Yahoo

[Milo Minderbinder]

BT! dumps! Yahoo! after! 10! long! years! together! ? The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/31/bt_ditches_yahoo/)

This is really going to cause problems

First for those who use the @btyahoo.com version of their e-mail addresses rather than @btinternet.com

next for anyone who uses the Yahoo IMAP/POP servers rather than the btinternet ones

for anyone whose browser home page is set to www.btyahoo.com

It was painful enough when BT Business Broadband switched their hosting to Microsoft's cloud services. This is going to be worse.
I really don't think they've thought this through

[mixture]

I really don't think they've thought this through

Its BT my dear Milo. Do you think they think anything through, especially when it comes to dealing with their smaller customers at BT Retail level ?

Seriously, they've got their fingers in so many pies with their monopoly, and they know the regulator has no teeth ... so what does it matter to them if they loose a few BT Retail residential customers. Residential customers are just cannon fodder for BT, with the associated churn rate (e.g. they loose a few customers through the Yahoo dump, but they win a few through the new BT Sport .... the end result is either the same number, or likely more customers than they had before they dumped Yahoo).

[Milo Minderbinder]

whats worrying me is that for the last ten years my @btinternet.com account has survived by being piggybacked onto the Yahoo system. I closed my BT dialup internet account many years ago, but the mail account persisted. With this change I can forsee it vanishing down the plughole. Annoying if it happens - I've had the e-mail address since around 1990 and losing it will be a real PITA

[Flying Serpent]

Why the apparent animosity towards BT mixture? Are they really any worse than their competitors? In my experience the answer is no...I've been with them for years without a single issue....affordable and reliable for me at least. Just what I want from an ISP/Phone provider. Admittedly I haven't tried any other ISPs as I haven't needed to..... The added bonus is that I also receive a 'loyalty deal' meaning that I get an excellent deal.

Genuine question..

[Heathrow Harry]

been a lot of problems with BT password resets and accounts wrongly closed out for the last 3 moths I believe due to some "upgrade" at Yahoo

[renfrew]

One BT forums site now has 75 pages of complaints about hacking and spam e mails being sent from members' addresses.
BT refused to admit anything but have apparently now taken action.
The same thing is happening on Yahoo itself indicating multiple security breaches.
Then Sky for some reason switched to Yahoo resulting in a total fiasco.
My own Sky address hasn't worked since the changeover.

[Capetonian]

I am concerned about this. I have the bt.yahoo paid email with several addresses. When I took it out it was associated with a BT landline account at a property in the UK. I now no longer own the property or have a BT landline account. Is this going to impact me, I currentl use the [email protected] address format?

[Milo Minderbinder]

Capetonian

exactly the situation I'm in, and I have no answer to your question.
I can forsee a clearout of accounts by BT. Yahoo allowed accounts like ours to survive as an extension of the Yahoo free service, but I can't see BT maintaining them.

Time to get some alternatives in place in case theres a shut-out

[ShyTorque]

Having changed from a Sky internet account to a BT one, I've had all sorts of strange goings on over the past couple of weeks. My Sky email address still works (it's part of my TV package), and it was originally shutting me out of out my BT emails. Every time I tried to get into my BT emails via the BT homepage links, my Sky emails appeared, but no BT ones.

One BT forums site now has 75 pages of complaints about hacking and spam e mails being sent from members' addresses.

I've also suffered from this since the "switchover" to Yahoo. Someone in Estonia was sending junk emails to my contacts, from my BT internet address.

[Guest 112233]

Sorry I've only looked at the postings on PPRuNe not the reg article:

has anyone in the "know" had any info from BT or (Contracts permitting) any informed ideas as to how the change will affect those "bottom feeders" like me. I'm like Milo here - OK I can use Graggle - but I've a lot of only infrequently used but important EM addresses with my *.btinternet account.

Obviously no-one gives a toss at a well known ISP - by the way watch out for date scrambling of incoming EM's and I have set up the EM ports to avoid port 25 SMTP.

[Guest 112233]

Generally I've only had intermittent problems with B.T E Mail in the last 6 months or so.

My big beef with them was a lightening induced failure that took 6 weeks to fix, because of a backlog, caused by their commitments to the Olympic games.

By the way I've used BT since I had dialup.

CAT III

[Flying Serpent]

Thanks for the replies. Seems I have been fortunate with my BT service. It just works perfectly and I've never had an outage in more than 10 years.

[glad rag]

Yahoo have serios security failings and have had for some considerable time. In fact you might wonder if they would be better just starting over again [in fact that would be disastrous for so many yahoo based interest forums] .

[spannersatcx]

From 17 June 2013, the terms and conditions for accessing the email that comes with your BT Broadband (BT Yahoo! Mail) will change.

All BT Broadband customers have a BT Yahoo! Mail address (usually ending in @btinternet.com or @btopenworld.com), but not everyone wants to use it. So we've decided to close email accounts that haven't been used for more than 150 days. To do this, we need to change our terms.

After 17 June 2013 we will begin to close email accounts that haven’t been used for more than 150 days. This will delete the email address and all the contents of the mailbox.

Don't worry, your email account will keep working as long as:

•you continue to log in and use it from bt.yahoo.com, or
•you continue to log in and use it from your computer email software (such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird), or your mobile email software, or
•you have Auto Forward set up.
If you haven’t used your email account since 18 Jan 2013, or if you’re not sure when you last logged in – and still want to keep it – just log in before 17 June and at least once every 150 days after. If you can’t remember your log-in details, you’ll need to reset them online:
bt link (http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/43867/c/346,412/session/L3RpbWUvMTM3MDI3NDQyOC9zaWQvTmVPdlhQcmw%3D)

[Milo Minderbinder]

back to their policy before the Yahoo tieup
except in those days you had to dial in with a modem once every three months...

still doesn't make clear the position of someone who no longer has a BT internet account but still uses old BT mail accounts

[mixture]

Flying Serpent,

Good question.

However too much detail to go into. I regularly deal with both BT and their competitors, so I've perhaps seen more facets of BT than you have.

BT are an old behemoth of an incumbent operator desperately trying to cling onto whatever parts of a monopoly they have left. There are almost always better choices than BT, especially at retail level.

[Capetonian]

Thanks Milo, and others. It seems that BT will be happy to keep charging me £1.60 a month for the 'premium mail' service even without an associated telephone line.

I have received a phishing email about this upgrade, and to warn others, here it is :

Image too large - 1024 x 800 max
The link goes to
http://iohodhd.net (link deliberately broken) ne.net/klkjndslf89745/ which obviously has sod all to do with BT.

The headers show that it comes from
Sender41.138.188.41
unknown
Nigeria Lagos
6.45313.3958AS37127 VISAFONE

There's a surprise!

[Capetonian]

There seems to be a spate of hacking going on.

My primary @btinternet.com account stopped working about half an hour ago, password didn't work, went through 'forgot my password' procedure (but I hadn't forgotten it...) and that didn't work as the security answers were 'wrong'.

Rang them ..... Indian call centre ....... transferred from the Broadband support number to the Premium Mail number, both exceptionally helpful, friendly, and solved the problem very quickly. I know people like to moan about these call centres but, in this case at least, 10/10. If anyone from BT reads this ..... thank you.

[Heathrow Harry]

yes - the guys in India are 100% helpful - I've had to use them a lot recently due to Yahoo causing idiot problems