Yahoo's being criticised for slack security, after another 60,000 email accounts were hacked.
Telecom had to cancel the passwords of 60,000 YahooXtra users at short notice at the weekend, saying their accounts had been compromised by phishing emails.
A week ago, around 15,000 accounts were affected by a spam email virus, with repeated attacks forcing Telecom to review its contract with email provider Yahoo.
Bruce Simpson, editor of New Zealand technology website Aadvark Daily, says repeated cyber-attacks haven't been taken seriously enough.
“This was first detected back in November last year I think, and Yahoo came out and said, ‘Oh, we’ve fixed it’. The same attack was used again in January, so they came out early in January and said, ‘No, we’ve fixed it now’. Then actually I had my account hacked, so they obviously haven’t fixed it,” says Mr Simpson.
He says if Yahoo loses its contract with Telecom, its reputation will suffer.
Telecom’s retail chief executive Chris Quinn admits the company can’t promise the Yahoo email service is entirely secure.
“I don’t think we could say we’re 100 percent confident that no malicious attack will occur on Yahoo again, I think that would be a little naïve,” he says. “This is a global phenomenon now and that’s why it’s so important for people to regularly change their password.”
Mr Quinn says some customers had to wait up to an hour-and-a-half to make contact with Telecom's call centre at the weekend, despite boosting worker numbers by 50 percent.
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source: newshub archive
