OK Computer

Ever had your e-mail account given to another person? Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it, but it happened to me today with my Yahoo!Xtra address.

I hardly ever use my Xtra e-mail address. However, it's on my “Send & Receive All” schedule, and this morning when I checked my e-mail, the Xtra account failed to connect — apparently my password was incorrect. I have had an Xtra account for about 10 years and I have never changed the password (although it’s a good idea to regularly change such passwords). I went to the Yahoo!Xtra website and followed the “forgotten password” link and reset the password (to the one I have always used). I pressed “Send & Receive” in my e-mail client again, and this time it worked.

A few e-mails were downloaded, however, the e-mails were addressed to someone else. Someone with a similar first name and the same surname as mine. His contact details were on one of the e-mails and so I gave him a ring. He was understandably surprised to hear that I had accessed his e-mails. It was my turn to be astounded when he told me that he had set up a new account with Xtra yesterday and that they had set him up with my Xtra e-mail address.

I rang the Xtra helpdesk and a nice, friendly joker said that he would look into it. He rang back about an hour later to say that it had all been “fixed”. The rep’ who sold the account to my namesake yesterday apparently hadn’t checked properly.

The rep’ simply changed the password on my e-mail account and gave my namesake the details.

This all ended happily, but had there been less honest people involved and sensitive information in any of the e-mail messages, then this could have become very ugly indeed.

I'm not really sure why I have continued to use Telecom as my ISP. We have posted some very good reasons not to use Xtra:

• Xtra blocks mass e-mails, but customers unaware
• Xtra Email Problems
• Telecom wins Consumer's Complete Ass Award

One reason for staying with Telecom was that I liked having free wireless internet at Telecom hotspots, but they are charging for this service now. Any ideas for a better ISP so that I don't go out of the frying pan into the fire?