Email account stolen and used

[CallMeLou]

Over the New Years holiday of 2003/2004, my husband's email account was stolen. We were on vacation and had no computer access during that time. When we returned home, he tried to check his email, but it said his password was incorrect. He tried using his identifying information to access the account, but the zip code and the security question had been changed as well. Everyday, for several days, he would attempt to sign into the account, so that it would lock down and so NO ONE could access it. After several days of searching, we found a phone number for the email provider (one of the free services) and he managed to get in contact with a customer service rep. It took more than an hour of going over his account history, but his account was restored to him.
Shortly after the account was compromised, people started to alienate him. He was supposed to attend a convention, but other people who were going to attend said that they would not go if he was there. He was blackballed. Then came the death threats. These threats were posted on a public forum, provided by the same company the email account was through.
This summer, I was reading that forum, and someone posted a message that he had received "hate mail" from my husband, out of the blue a few years back. That was the first time that we knew for sure that the account had actually been used to send any mail. The blackballing and alienation sort of made sense. I do not know what was contained in these emails because no one would talk to us. All we ever got was a "you know what you did" type of response.
We believe we know who stole the account. The police did an investigation, but the prosecutor subpoenaed the email provider for the email account records and they only went back three months!!!
This was evidence of a crime! How can the email provider just purge this information? He specifically asked them to save that information, pending an investigation. No one would get involved until the person said he received hate mail from my husband and that he would shoot him in the head if he ever saw him. The police investigation is now closed. I am having a very hard time accepting that the email provider just deleted that information! There are posts on their forums that date back to 2001, at least!
Not only do I have an issue with them not saving that information, but they did NOTHING to uphold their own terms of service. We complained to them about the threats, but to this day, they remain on that forum, AND the people who wrote them still have accounts.
Is there any course of action that we can take, or do I just have to let it go and get over it? I would like for the person who stole the account to be prosecuted, but if that can't happen, what are the chances of going after the email provider civilly? These large companies have legal resources out the wazoo! They need to be held accountable! What of the individuals?

HELP!!!

 

[Michael Wechsler]

This summer, I was reading that forum, and someone posted a message that he had received "hate mail" from my husband, out of the blue a few years back. That was the first time that we knew for sure that the account had actually been used to send any mail. The blackballing and alienation sort of made sense. I do not know what was contained in these emails because no one would talk to us. All we ever got was a "you know what you did" type of response.
We believe we know who stole the account. The police did an investigation, but the prosecutor subpoenaed the email provider for the email account records and they only went back three months!!!
This was evidence of a crime! How can the email provider just purge this information? He specifically asked them to save that information, pending an investigation. No one would get involved until the person said he received hate mail from my husband and that he would shoot him in the head if he ever saw him. The police investigation is now closed. I am having a very hard time accepting that the email provider just deleted that information! There are posts on their forums that date back to 2001, at least!

Wow - this doesn't usually happen. What your husband should do is send email with his current account to everyone he knows and notify them about the criminal case and an apology that they may have received a hate filled email from an imposter.

That said, I'm guessing that the prosecutor may have seen this as a hate crime and thus may have had more incentive to prosecute this case. With regard to the ISP, you can't really blame them. There is SO much information that is generated from a server that it is difficult to ask an ISP/web site provider to keep these records. In the future and with storage become so much cheaper, it is possible that federal law might mandate keeping of log files for a certain period of time. I can tell you that the logs for this web site are many megabytes in size. For my company's web site they can be several gigabytes in size... easily. And for what purpose need they be saved for years? You can see the problem and I am extremely sympathetic.

Not only do I have an issue with them not saving that information, but they did NOTHING to uphold their own terms of service. We complained to them about the threats, but to this day, they remain on that forum, AND the people who wrote them still have accounts.
Is there any course of action that we can take, or do I just have to let it go and get over it? I would like for the person who stole the account to be prosecuted, but if that can't happen, what are the chances of going after the email provider civilly? These large companies have legal resources out the wazoo! They need to be held accountable! What of the individuals?

Now you are talking about a different issue. If the company itself violated it's own terms of service and the violator still has an account there, then you should speak to an attorney and discuss sending the owner of the business a preservation letter, requiring them by law to preserve their records. You should bring that to a prosecutor AND you should consider filing civil suit against them - or filing and then getting what you want from them. You may never have to spend the money on the lawsuit to prosecute it fully, just use it as leverage to get the perpetrator and sue him.

Yes... this is a VERY messy area and unfortunately the law has not caught up with the times at the moment and what you are describing is unfortunately very common. I wish you luck with this and let us know if we can help.