Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Alan Silverman
Alan SilvermanFlag for United States of America

asked on

Yahoo email hack

My client’s yahoo account got hacked and the usual emails (I’m in Spain with my family and we’ve been robbed…) sent out to everyone in his contact list.  

This is somewhat different from the usual.  First, he doesn’t know if the hack happened three weeks ago or only recently.  Three weeks ago he responded to a phishing email asking him to log into his account.  He did, giving them his email account and password.  Immediately he realized what he’d done.  So within minutes he logged into the account and changed the password.

This morning someone started sending spam emails from his yahoo account.  He assumed this was a consequence of the phishing attempt.  If so it means that even though he changed the password the original hackers still have access to his account. This would be troubling.

But his new password wasn’t that much more difficult than their old, so I’m not sure someone didn’t just hack the new one and the two incidents are unrelated. I had him change it to something much more difficult.  We also looked at where yahoo logins had taken place and sure enough, he had one from Nigeria two days ago.  

He had decided to move to Gmail anyway so he’s going to do that now.  But he has two concerns:
1. He’s worried about getting his contact list over to Gmail.  There’s an app that does this, from Gmail.  But he’s worried that they might have introduced some code or virus into the yahoo account/contact list, and if he uses any mechanized way to transfer the list it might somehow corrupt his new Gmail account too. Is this a reasonable fear?
2. He has created many email folders in his yahoo account.  Is there any way to transfer those folders to Gmail, again without creating some corruption in the new account?

I told him he should pay for Yahoo Plus, just so he could call customer service.  This would also allow him to set up his email in Thunderbird and get his email down on his computer.  But is there a way not only to download his inbox but also his folders? If he can, is there any danger in downloading these emails to his computer?
Thanks,
Al
SOLUTION
Avatar of artsec
artsec

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of ElrondCT
ElrondCT
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Alan Silverman

ASKER

Thanks for your advice.
Alan