Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org.
QUESTION: A friend of mine just had their Yahoo password stolen. The culprit then changed the password and Yahoo can’t help them. What should I do to prevent this?
PC CLUB:
First of all Yahoo can be reached at. To reach a live person, press 2 when the recording asks for your selection. What happened to your friend is happening more frequently. What I’ve seen in the past which I suspect happened in your friend’s case is that the password was stolen (don’t ask me how) and the thief logged into the account and changed the password. They then began to email everyone in the address book.
If you have written down the answers to several secret questions that you provided when you originally set up the account you can reset the password. You can accomplish this by calling Yahoo. It is for this very reason that I recommend that everyone that uses a web mail service such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail or Juno Mail go into your account and reset your secret questions in case you ever forget your password.
With a service such as Cox, you can always call them atfrom anywhere in Orange County to get help with a misplaced password.
Another way to remember your passwords is by using a Password Manager such as RoboForm, available at http://www.roboform.com or the free KeePass available at http://www.keepass.com. Bear in mind that no program will help you if your password is hacked or stolen. The best prevention is to use a strong password. You can learn more about strong passwords at http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/.
When you sign up for email, many services including Yahoo ask you for a secondary or alternate email address. If you have such an email address and misplace your Yahoo password, they will send the password to your secondary address. If you don’t have one, set it up and go back to Yahoo or your particular email service and set up the secondary email address right away.
Ed Schwartz is a member of the North Orange County Computer Club. To send in a question, go to edwardns.com and click the Contact Me menu. Archives of previous columns are also on the website.