December 13, 2007 at 7:13 am · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile

I’m in a bit of a quandary.

Fasthosts, my email provider of choice, had a web intrusion a while back:

On Thursday 29 November, a number of Fasthosts customers had their Control Panel and FTP passwords automatically reset. Last month, Fasthosts wrote to all its customers to advise them that the company had discovered a network intrusion involving a Fasthosts server, and as a precautionary measure, recommended that all customers update their Control Panel, FTP and Email passwords.

Fasthosts was made aware on 29 November, that a very small number of customers who did not change their passwords had experienced a compromise to their FTP space. As a result, Fasthosts immediately implemented automatic password changes to every customer that did not change their Control Panel and FTP passwords as was previously recommended. Fasthosts will also change all unchanged email passwords automatically on Thursday 13 December. These affected customers will receive their new passwords by Royal Mail and have been informed of all these changes and what they are required to do.

The arse? Well, I’m in San Francisco and my mail is being redirected to my parents’ place. They’ve had one letter from Fasthosts on my behalf with a password. Trouble is, nowhere on the letter does it give the account that the password is for. At least, both my brother and mother can’t see any account reference despite my repeated ‘ARE YOU SURE? READ IT AGAIN’ questions over the phone. I’ve got about 5 Fasthosts accounts you see.

The new password doesn’t appear to work with any.

There’s been plenty of notice and ‘communication’ from them. Just, not the actual passwords-in-the-mail as yet.

I’ve already got a 3,000+ mail back log. And now I’m locked out from my email account, save from my good mobile messaging — it still works. Useful for monitoring mail. Not for doing anything else.

Thus I’ve now, as of midnight, been locked out of my email.

What do I do?

Well I phoned support. “You’re number 35 in the queue”.

Geez. Left it five hours. Number 41. Geez.

Everyone and their dog is calling support. They’ve turned off the ‘forgot your password’ automatic notifier so if you want to get into your email, you either need to call them (which EVERYONE is doing) or you need to have been lucky enough to get your password(s) in the mail. Triple arse.

The line’s been engaged for the last hour.

How long can I wait? When do I swap to another provider? I’m a loyal fan of Fasthosts — but I can’t afford one business day without access to my real time mail.

Hopefully by mid afternoon, London Time, the furious customers hunting for passwords will have been sated and I’ll be able to get access to tech support. Otherwise, I’ll need to change pronto.

So if you’re expecting email replies from me… standby…