Spoof email from BT about email account

Nita79

Warren Buckley responded to my direct email complain to him, Ian Livingston & Michael Rakes and said

"Thank you for your email.

Whilst I appreciate the points you make I do need to clarify that BT did not make a commitment to offer free email for life. We did make clear we would always offer free email to BT Internet customers.

As a PLC BT has a duty to ensure we earn a return on the money we invest and spend on behalf of our shareholders.

Offering free email to customers who do not have BT Broadband is not a reasonable investment.

Talk21 users can continue with the email service either by using BT Broadband or by signing up to Premium Email.

We will not be changing our policy on this.

Regards

Warren"

mikeymike123

There is a free way to keep your BT email account. If you have a friend with BT Broadband simply ask them for permission to link your email account to them. The bizarre thing is all you need is the person's name, post code and phone number. I linked my email account to a friend's broadband after asking them if it was OK. But, as I knew all the information required, I could have done it without asking them!

I don't know the exact data protection rules but I suppose it's possible that in theory they could phone BT and ask for the password to my account. But I'm not sure how they'd know I've linked my account to them. As it won't cost them anything it won't show up in a bill.

In short, if you have a friend who has BT Broadband, ask them to link your email address to their account!

peter999

You used to be able to maintain the BT email addresses by using Dial-Up internet.

Few years ago if you hadn't used Dial-Up internet for 90 days, BT would send email giving 60 days notice to use dial-up access or your email account would be closed.

But BT is ceasing Dial-Up internet service as well.

Madworld2

Its just unbelievable isn't!? This thing is massive, it should be on the evening news, I'm not joking! I have all my internet banking, tax returns, insurances etc etc on this email and I could loose it, but its not the £1.60 per month (although I feel livid about that) so much as the fear of giving my bank details to criminals. What about all those hospital appointments/uni students who are about to get loans and course information etc. It just goes on and on and I am still not sure if its a skam, can someone please tell me Does anyone really know?

giraffe69

I've got less than a month to sort through 14 years worth of saved/sent and received emails, notify 14 years worth of organisations that I have registered this address with and also port all of the emails I need to keep out of Talk21 and into a new provider and I just think it has been very poorly handled by the company.

I have all my internet banking, tax returns, insurances etc etc on this email and I could loose it

As a practical step why can't you download and install something like Thunderbird, have all emails go to that from the old closing BT account and then link it with the new account. The you can sort through all the old emails at your leisure or forget for another 14 years. I'm trying hard to think of a valuable email from 1999!

frugalstephen

Madworld2 wrote: »

Its just unbelievable isn't!? This thing is massive, it should be on the evening news, I'm not joking! I have all my internet banking, tax returns, insurances etc etc on this email and I could loose it, but its not the £1.60 per month (although I feel livid about that) so much as the fear of giving my bank details to criminals. What about all those hospital appointments/uni students who are about to get loans and course information etc. It just goes on and on and I am still not sure if its a skam, can someone please tell me Does anyone really know?

Yes - it is NOT a scam. Though it is an absolutely immoral & hateful thing to do. I also have my primary address as 'talk21', and have had so for 15 years now. It was launched in 1997 as a 'free for life' email address, and a communication system for the 21st century, hence the '21' name.

It was specifically NOT linked to an ISP, as in those days, ISPs were launched and went bust every month. That's why I chose it as I didn't want to be tied to a particular ISP.

I've just spent the last hour writing down some of the web sites I've registered for over the years and am already at well over 100 - the stress & hassle this is causing me is unbelievable. I've reported the issue to Ofcom & Which, but I'm only one guy - I know they'll just toss the issue in the bin.

I'm quite happy to be bombarded with adverts in my email browser, I'm not stupid, I know that's how 'free' email is paid for.

Threatening to delete your account in 4 weeks with all associated emails (& I have over 30,000) unless you pay up is nothing short of blackmail, and BT should hang their head in shame at doing this. The objections I've seen on them carrying out this action is underwhelming, and I'm shocked more people aren't angry.

I guess if Gmail turned round with a threat of deleting your account in 4 x weeks unless you started paying them would be different?

Teapot55

Someone I know slightly and with whom I exchange occasional emails has had her account hacked. The other day I had one of those emails from her email address - I'm abroad and have had all my money stolen, etc etc.

Then today in my Inbox there was an email from BT broadband (not BT Broadband - notice the difference?) but when I opened it and hovered my mouse over the heading it showed as being from that friend's email address [xxxxxx@btinternet.com].

That's the clever bit: because it said @btinternet.com it would be easy to think it was from BT.

I have reported her account as being hacked and have forwarded the phishing email to BT via their help-pages (as advised earlier on by another poster to this thread).

Uxb

Madworld2 wrote: »

Its just unbelievable isn't!? This thing is massive, it should be on the evening news, I'm not joking!

LOL
The rest of the world does not revolve around your and a few others minor 'first world' problems as they are sometimes called.
In case you don't follow the news, people in Syria are being gassed, in Iraq being blown up and a helicopter crashed in the North Sea killing 4. I don't really think your email problems really fall into the category of "newsworthy".

DonnySaver

Sorry I've not added any further input to this discussion for a while but I've been away. Glad I'm not the only unhappy bunny with BT !

I questioned BT a bit further about this and got the following back:-

"As you no longer have bt services you cannot retain this email address as a free account"

I replied to them saying that I do have a BT service - I have my line rental with them! I got the following response:-

"Thankyou for your reply.However,you need to have active BT Broadband service in order to get the email address as a free account.Iam sorry to let you know that you cannot get it free being a landline user and you need to have a active broadband package inorder to get it free."

So, there you have it. Talk21 is going, as is BT Internet mail if you're not a BT broadband customer. My friend has a BT Internet account and he's had the same email from them too.

Therefore, I've already set up my new webmail account and ported every single one of my emails to it. Also, I've contacted the umpteen organisations that held my talk21.com address and changed it with them.

Goodbye BT! I was thinking of moving my broadband to you to get BT Sports.... but not anymore. You can soon wave goodbye to my line rental with you as well. You're fast becoming a clone of SKY ...and I hate them too!

FloFlo

I have a btinternet and a btopenworld email addy that both come through one bt yahoo account, but I also have several btyahoo.co.uk email addresses that I set up through their spam guard as disposable email addresses - my question is if I pay the £1.60 a month will these disposable email addys still work or are btyahoo email addys going?