Telecom Encourages Customers to Change Yahoo! Xtra Passwords

14th February, 2013

Telecom Encourages All Customers to Change Yahoo! Xtra Passwords

Telecom is urging its Yahoo! Xtra email customers who have not yet changed their password to do so as soon as possible to enhance their email account security following a recent cyber attack on the email service.

“We would like to thank the 50,000 customers who have changed their passwords since this issue first arose last weekend,” says Telecom Retail CEO, Chris Quin. “The vast majority of these customers have made the password change easily using our online tool.

“However, we would like to see all our 450,000 Yahoo! Xtra customers change their passwords. Yahoo! has given Telecom an assurance that changing customer passwords stops malicious ‘spam’ emails being sent without the customer’s knowledge if their account has been compromised. It is also good practice to change passwords regularly.”

As announced yesterday, Telecom is initiating a password change programme, emailing those customers that Yahoo! has confirmed as having compromised accounts and asking them to change their passwords immediately. If they do not make the change within 24 hours, they will be required to do so next time they access their email. The first batch of 10,000 affected customers will be emailed by Telecom today.

Telecom appreciates that many customers use their broadband connection to access email, either via the Yahoo! service or other email services and assures them that they can continue to use their Telecom broadband connection with confidence regardless of the email platform they choose.

Telecom announced earlier this week it is undertaking an urgent and comprehensive review over the next two months of its approach to email service to best meet customers’ needs.

PASSWORD KEY POINTS:

• Passwords can be changed at telecom.co.nz/changepassword
• Customers should use a strong, unique password, with a combination of letters, numbers and symbols, and change it regularly.
• Customers using email clients (such as Outlook) or via smartphones or tablets will need to update them with their new email password. Instructions on how to do this can be found at telecom.custhelp.com and search for “email setup”.
• Many customers whose email accounts have not been compromised may still receive malicious emails purportedly from one of their contacts. They should not face any security risk if they simply delete these emails.
• Do not hit the reply button on suspicious emails but send a separate communication to your contact to tell them their account appears to have been compromised and that they should change their password.

ENDS

© Scoop Media