Hopefully you've never been the owner of a compromised email account. If you have, then you already know how frustrating it can be.
At PenTeleData, when we notice that an email account has been hacked/compromised, that means that someone likely has unauthorized access, so it becomes necessary to stop that account (and the criminals) from causing further damage to our network or gaining access to other email accounts. The only way for us to isolate the incident is to suspend service to that email address. Understandably, this can make affected customers very angry. It's a no-win situation. We certainly don't want to upset our customers and customers don't want to be without service, but there's really no better way.
Luckily, we can all work together to keep these hacked emails from happening. The most common culprits are virus or malware infection, phishing, weak passwords or shared passwords. While each of these may sound somewhat simple or harmless, they're not.
At PenTeleData, we run anti-virus and anti-spam systems to help protect against phishing, viruses, SPAM, and malware on our email servers. We have host and network intrusion detection systems to identify and prevent our servers from getting hacked. We also maintain firewalls and keep server software and/or Operating System patches up to date.
It's VERY important for our customers to help too. First and foremost, make sure that you're using current virus protection software and a current operating system on your computer. Then, create strong passwords and don't share them with anyone. Last, beware of any email or pop-up box that asks you to provide personal information.
We also recommend changing your passwords frequently. To change your PenTeleData email password, go to our webpage, www.ptd.net. Click on the "Account Management" link (This is located on the top right side of our page, under the heading of "PenTeleData Customer Tools"). When prompted, log in with your email name and password (this page may open in a new window). Click on the "Change Password" link and follow the prompts to change your password. Then, log out of Account Management and close the window.