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Question

Cox Email Outage

Dec 15, 2012 7:34AM PST

Cox email has been down in more than 11 states since Friday afternoon. Cox is not giving the reason why and I want to know if I should be concerned about my personal information and password being compromised? Is there something I can do on my end to secure my information? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
The thing about email is that it is all compromised.
Dec 15, 2012 7:43AM PST

Folk usually are in disbelief that our governments have granted themselves free access to email. It's a provision noted in the next link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_privacy (yes I know but you can do more research on this.)

"US Law

After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[1] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that is needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[1] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.

Email sent by employees through their employer's equipment has no expectation of privacy; the employer may monitor and all communications through their equipment. According to a 2005 survey by the American Management Association, about 55% of US employers monitor and read their employees' email. Even attorney-client privilege is not guaranteed through an employer's email system; US Courts have rendered contradictory verdicts on this issue.[2]"

So without any privacy I strongly suggest you treat all email as less secure than a postcard you sent in the usual mailbox.
Bob

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Thanks, but I need another kind of advice
Dec 15, 2012 7:46AM PST

The Cox forum now says it has been hacked. Since Cox isn't saying anything themselves, I wonder if there is anything I can do now?

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Just backup what you have now and
Dec 15, 2012 7:51AM PST

And consider anything that was on their servers to be in the hands of bad folk.

At least you know now what's up with email. It's not secure or private. Please treat it as such from now on.
Bob

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But I think...
Dec 15, 2012 2:07PM PST

You're partially missing the concern of many people R Profitt.

Many of us cox customers don't necessarily rely 100% on their email service as we all realize it is sketchy at best, but you do HAVE to have one to access your account and thus billing details. If there is a potential breech, THAT is the real problem instead of what may or may not be in some emails.

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Thanks for this.
Dec 16, 2012 12:10AM PST

I see that concern. It's sad that email is not considered private as paper mail. If you've been around you see an erosion of privacy and in the case of electronic mail, folk are thinking it's secure or safe.

The other concern is with folk that leave there stuff on email on their servers or "the cloud." As you can see, that's not reliable enough to go without your own copy if you must keep such stuff.
Bob

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Answer
cox email outage
Dec 15, 2012 9:58AM PST

Cox stock has recently tanked, they are broke, and goin g out of business..the techs have left, and THAT is why there has been an email outage for 2 days now. Hopefully, AT&T or Verizon will p[ick up the pieces.

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Cox stock?
Dec 15, 2012 10:29PM PST

That would be fine and dandy except for the fact that I am pretty darned sure that Cox Communications is a privately held company and not publicly traded. I'll gladly be corrected once you post the exchange it is traded on and the stock symbol.

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Answer
Down in San Diego now, Saturday 7 pm
Dec 15, 2012 11:39AM PST

Cannot find info on source of problem on Net, other than earlier reports from several states in East/Midwest. Called customer service and a recorded message says "we are aware of the problem and working to resolve it". I have a TON of info in their servers, hope it comes back!

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I don't want to tell you how bad it is. But
Dec 15, 2012 2:42PM PST

But you can see others are weighing in on leaving what you don't have a backup of on any server or "cloud." I'm sure you've heard of this fellow -> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57486930-71/woz-the-cloud-is-a-nightmare/

Email for me is local. I download it with an email client so if they go bust, I have my contacts and more. Then I have backups and more.

Many moderators here have a saying -> "We only lose what we don't backup."

My thought is that folk don't do this till they lose something they didn't want to lose.
Bob