Security vs. Sympathy 3

[CajunCenturion]

Will a natural unforeseen disaster be dealt with any differntly by Yahoo, Hotmail & the rest?

I certainly hope not. What a slippery slope that would be.

Good Luck
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[teles]

An update for anyone interested, regarding my late son's Hotmail account...

After providing the appropriate legal documents, which included photo ID to prove my identity, someone in Microsoft's legal department burned the contents of his Hotmail account to CD and sent it via courier.

Microsoft treated my request the same as it would have if a court had issued a subpoena to release said contents.
Yahoo has similar provisions in their TOS regarding access to email accounts for law enforcement authorities. No reason they couldn't have done the same for the soldier's family, if the family had followed similar steps as I.

Terry.

 

[njwcad]

I think this comes down to a judgement call. I tend to side with Yahoo but can also see the flip side.

Do people expect email to be disclosed upon death? I doubt most people have thought about this but my gut reaction is that this is not a natural assumption.

Personally I would not like my inbox to be published as a permanent record of my life (consisting mainly of idle chat, bad jokes and spam).

Pete.

 

[CajunCenturion]

Since njwcad reminded us of this situation, I did some research to find out what happened.

From April 21[sup]st[/sup] - Yahoo releases e-mail of deceased Marine

Good Luck
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[sleipnir214]

To me it looks like Yahoo, given the uncertain legal status of the email of the deceased, is taking the right tack:

Adamantly keep everyone out until ordered to do otherwise by a court. Then cheerfully deliver the content to the loved ones of the deceased.


I'm glad there was a satisfactory ending for the family.


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TANSTAAFL!!

 

[craigsboyd]

Thanks CajunCenturion. Like sleipnir214, I too am glad that this story ended as well as could be expected for the family.

http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com

 

[Sashanan2]

This topic has done some good for me, as well; it made me realize the importance of at least drawing up a short document with my wishes and a list of people I wish to be informed should I die unexpectedly. At age 25, it's not something you spend a lot of time thinking about normally, but I feel better for having my wishes in writing now; and I know that if I do die, I can count on my next of kin to inform various key internet contacts, and not leave a lot of people wondering why Sashanan never comes online anymore.

If I die, there will be no legal battle, no painful discussions between a distraught family and a stern e-mail provider; every password they need is in my living will.

"Any fool can defend his or her mistakes; and most fools do." -- Dale Carnegie

 

[tamerlane1965]

I found this site and was reading this thread when I did a search for "minor's email account" and I want to comment on the reply from Stella on this subject. If child opens an account and lies about their age, there's not much anyone can do to stop them from opening the account. As a parent, I opened a Yahoo! email account for my elementary age daughter and they required me to provide my Yahoo! account and a credit card to prove I was of age and they emailed me at my account as well. This was less than a year ago so it's probably still the way to do it.

On another note, I thought when I setup the minor's account and turned on the SPAM protection that as long as she stayed on kid-friendly sites (Disney, Nickelodean and such) that her account would be safe from porno and such. Wow, was I stupid. I'm not sure what site sold their lists or were hacked into or what, but she got two pornographic emails one day and a few more the next and and quite a few more the next and so on. Luckily, she's not on email that much (yet) and I was on the computer, logged in for her and noticed the subject lines before turning the computer over to her! I forwarded the first one to Yahoo! with full headers and asked for assistance and told them to forward any replies to my parent account. I got a "form letter" reply to her account that basically told me there wasn't anything that could be done put open them and add the person to the SPAM list so they couldn't email her again or go into her account and clean out the garbage before she gets on email. Needless to say, I've changed her password so she can't access it anymore without me looking into it first.

 

[flapeyre]

tamerlane1965:

Have you checked the PC in question for spyware lately? That could very well be the source of your daughter's spam. I don't use my Yahoo! e-mail at all anymore; just my ISP's, which has reasonably good filtering, and I report all spam to spam@uce.gov. You may want to use an antispyware program such as Microsoft Anti-Spyware - set it to do a complete sweep every night at say, 2AM.

Dic mihi solum facta, domina.

 

[chiph]

The new version of Mac OS (OS-X Tiger) has parental controls that allow you to set a list of people that your child is allowed to send and receive email from. Mail from any other sender gets diverted to another folder where you can review it.

Same thing for the iChat service -- you can set a list of people they're allowed to chat with.

Chip H.


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[mrdenny]

Yahoo (and hotmail, etc) get tons of spam sent to them. They don't have to get your daughters email from someone. Spammers use basic dictionary attack methods to find new email addresses. Once the get confermation that the email address exists (because the email doesn't bounce back) that email address gets added to the list of valid email addresses. When that spammer sells his list of email addresses to another spammer the volume increases.

Of course another explination could be spyware or virus on your pc. Or an a PC which belongs to someone who emails your daughter.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com