Media: Comcast hacked
Via C-Net, the reason folks foolish enough to rely on Comcast for email were denied that service yesterday:
The hackers apparently changed Comcast’s registrar account at Network Solutions, which altered the DNS servers that were used to direct Comcast.net requests. In other words, the hackers essentially redirected traffic destined for the URL Comcast.net. Instead, the traffic went to IP addresses in Germany and elsewhere, reported the blog Broadband Reports.
Comcast has stopped the traffic from being redirected to bogus servers, but users were still having trouble accessing the page as of 11:30 a.m. EDT. The reason is that it could take hours for the redirected traffic to propagate through DNS servers throughout the Internet.
Actually, as I understand the problem, the blame for this goes to Network Solutions, which insists on tossing ads for it’s services on “page cannot be found” messages when folks try to access pages that don’t really exist on a particular domain.
As I told my mother today: Never, ever use the email account your ISP gives you. It is good for nothing. Use Web mail. It follows you wherever you go, whatever ISP you are using.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Crappy thing is, some websites or services won’t accept a non-ISP email address to register as a way to prevent spammers and the like from polluting their site.
So, as an alternative, you can always create the ISP email account, then use it for those purposes.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
No, no, no. This is what screwed me over with my previous hosting company. I signed up using an ISP-related email address. The INSIST on sending me email ONLY at that address. Numerous attempts to get them to accept my NEW gmail address has failed.
Any company that won’t accept a Web mail address is screwed from the beginning. Avoid them. They are taking an easy way out to avoid (they think) what most sites consider routine maintenance and management.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Agh, messy.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
And if you lose your password, or can’t remember, you need to have access to an old invalid email address to get a new one sent to you. Some Websites are so automated, there is no human being to email to explain anything to.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
A long time ago when I had insightbb.com they monitored the email coming in and if their computer thought it was inappropriate or whatever it was blocked. They didn’t tell you this until you ask them why you weren’t getting certain emails. While I’m at it. For those of you with MSN if you are a senior citizen you can get a monthly discount but you have to explicitly ask for it.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
My 1 and 1 account allows me to create email addresses AND to forward all the mail that arrives. So I have a non yahoo mail address for a “real look”, but, the “real looking” email is forwarded to my yahoo account which I can access from any computer. Best part about yahoo/gmail is that when the HD crashes the mail is not lost. I have learned the hard way. Same reason I now use google docs for anything I want to save and be safe.