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Instant Messenger Security

It’s especially important that, when using Instant Messenger, when in Chatrooms and when participating in Newsgroups, etc. you do not divulge personal information, including your email address, to people you don’t know. If your email address is picked up from these ‘community services’ you could receive unwanted email, spam or other abuse, including virus attacks.

For more information about abuse, visit the BT Abuse Guidance web site at www.abuse-guidance.com.

What we’re doing
As part of our commitment to safety on the internet we’re taking steps to help ensure that your anonymity is protected when online. From the beginning of October, we’ll be creating a unique profile for you to use. This will be an alias that will help protect your identity when using BT Yahoo! Broadband community services, making sure your email address cannot easily be seen by other users.

How we’re doing this
Your unique profile will be automatically created and emailed to you. We’ll also send easy-to-follow instructions so that you may change or edit your alias and create new profiles, e.g. for secondary email addresses.

Your email service will be completely unaffected by the creation of a profile.

Create your own profile
If you’d like to make sure that your email address isn’t visible, you don’t have to wait until October. You can create your own profile now. All you need to do is follow the step-by-step instructions at the end of this email. If you don’t create your own profile, we’ll create it for you in October.

Personal web sites
A similar privacy and security situation arises if you create a personal web site. Your email address will be visible in the unique web address (URL) for your site. The creation of a profile will not affect this, so, if you would like to prevent your email address from being visible, we recommend that you use a separate sub-account in association with your personal web site. It’s easy to create a sub-account from the ‘My Account’ link on your homepage. In addition to your main account you also have up to ten sub-accounts, one of which you could use specifically for your personal web site.

Here’s how to create your own profile
Note: for security reasons you’ll be asked to enter your password during this process

Go to http://bt.yahoo.com and click on My Account in the blue area at the top of the page
In My Account click on ‘Change Yahoo Personal Info’
In the public information window click on ‘edit/create profiles’
Click on the ‘Create New Public Profile’ button
Complete the ‘Create New Public Profile’ form. The ‘name’ in Section One must be unique so please avoid common words. We suggest you use a string of numbers and characters (e.g. John2003). Details in Section Two will be visible in public so only fill in these fields if you want the information shown. Please make sure ‘Display Email Address’ is left as ‘No’ (the default setting). The directory listing box in Section Three - Choose Display Options should be unchecked.
Click on ‘Create Profile’
if the name you’ve entered already exists you’ll be asked to enter a new name and try again
You’ll see the new profile added to the list of profiles. Click on ‘Make Default’ to show this name rather than your email address in instant messenger, chat and other community services
Click ‘Finished Editing’

If you follow the process above, there should be no need for you to contact our customer support team. However, if you need help, please go to http://help.yahoo.com/uk/bt/contacts, choose your preferred contact method, and click ‘technical enquiry’.

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