Comments for How do I deal with email sent from a deceased's apparently hacked account?

Comment from Kandy Koopmann on 2010-05-11

2010-05-11T18:02:43Z

I lost my husband nearly a year ago, I knew of only 2 email accounts and closed both promptly, inagine my surprise when one kept getting hacked and his family and I kept getting things from it! I did contact Yahoo and security was involved, it has been resolved,..not easily or w/o lots of emotional stuff....Imagine my surprise this morning to find yet ANOTHER account unbeknownst to me or his family pop up on yahoo w/yet another spam. this horrible how spammers get ahold of things and don't give a darn how it may affect others on the www.

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Comment from Glenn P. on 2009-08-09

2009-08-09T07:16:30Z

One possibility which Leo overlooked is an postmortem messaging service. There are several available out there; one such I use is called DeathSwitch.COM:

http://www.deathswitch.com

This automated service prompts the subscriber (via E-Mail) for a reply at regular intervals; if the service's robot receives no response after a certain number of (completely configurable) challenges, it will send any "death message" of your choice to anyone you have selected.

Might the E-Mail the querant is complaining of, actually have originated with such a service?

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Comment from mark on 2009-08-04

2009-08-05T00:02:14Z

Also the email password could have been reset by correctly guessing the security questions ("what was the name of your first pet") etc.

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Comment from Roger b on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T20:54:17Z

There were some facts missing from this post. The nature of the E-mail. Was the E-mail written as the deceased might have written, but not yet sent, and queued in his/her E-mail client to be sent? It would then be possible to be accidentally sent some time later, if someone else powered on the machine and went online not knowing the E-mail was queued. Who had possession of the deceased's machine? And of course, it was possibly a compromised account.

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Comment from JH on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T16:49:13Z

Or persuade people to use some sort of service that, if they do not acknowledge something for x weeks, sends a 'death notice' to everyone on the contact list, and the password to a trusted few.

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Comment from Robert Pereda on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T15:20:35Z

Like Leo said- this is a tough one espcially if it's a free email account. The best solution is to contact the service provider an dhave them delete the email account.

[link removed]

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A comment on: How do I deal with email sent from a deceased's apparently hacked account?

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