This entry was posted on
Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at
3:04 pm and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

The Register – Fasthosts customers blindsided by emergency password reset: Fasthosts has announced that “a number” of its customers’* FTP spaces were raided as a result of the major hack that triggered a police investigation last month. It has applied a system-wide reset of thousands of passwords as a result… The firm is sending replacement passwords out via Royal Mail, it says. A Fasthosts statement described the move as a “precautionary measure”. All email passwords that were not changed will also be reset on 9/10 December. We’ve been bombarded by emails from angry webmasters who say no warning was given ahead of the reset, shutting down hundreds of websites.

Say NO to Fasthosts – Merry Christmas from Fasthosts: Fasthosts initiated this on Thursday night, and by all reports have not been able to send out new passwords by post yesterday (Friday). This means many people will not receive their new passwords until at least Tuesday/Wednesday next week. This amounts to a full week of lost business for any online shop or order-taking business hosting on Fasthosts servers. The Customer Service telephone number is permanently engaged, and the technical support lines are offering queuing times of over two hours. (“You are at queue position 54a”)

This latest debacle even rates a mention at the BBC website, and if you check out the Reg article, you will see (so far) a whopping 149 comments!

I’m looking at a copy of the email they sent to their customers right now. How did I get my hands on it? Well, they sent a copy to Clive, who certainly shouldn’t be on their customer database, given that Fasthosts themselves deactivated his account.

The words ‘arse’ and ‘elbow’ spring to mind.

Previously on Bloggerheads:
Fasthosts: a timeline of excellent service
Fasthosts and UKreg: why you should look elsewhere
Yet another reason to avoid Fasthosts like the plague
Fasthosts: I think I may be onto something here…

UPDATE (5 Dec) – The Register – Fasthosts customers still frozen out of websites: Fasthosts has promised it will bring in more support staff to deal with the volume of calls it is still receiving following its poorly-handled password reset on Friday… The system-wide reset was triggered by a hack attack in October. Fasthosts asked customers to change passwords at the time, and said last week that those who did would not be affected by the reset. Many Reg readers say they complied in October, but have been locked out now nevertheless… Customers who haven’t changed all their email passwords will face similar problems when they’re also reset on Sunday.