18 May 2022
UPDATE!
(IS YANDEX GETTING IT WRONG AGAIN… OR IS THERE A DIFFERENT REASON FOR INCONVENIENCING THEIR CUSTOMERS?)
Well, here I am more than two weeks after the sudden and unexpected 'freezing' of my two Yandex email accounts.
To date, there has been no restoration to access and no effort or attempt made by Yandex to make contact or resolve this outrageous state-of-affairs.
This has given me time to do a little consultation and research including a few contacts with other innocents who have been treated similarly.
What I've learned seems to indicate, what can only be described as a sly, dishonest and subversive attempt to wring personal information from their customers. Telephone numbers, addresses, identity information and according to some, even personal banking detail!
Now if this is true, it reveals a disgraceful attempt to destroy privacy and confidentiality of certain account owners and to hand over and trust your sensitive information to an anonymous group of people in a foreign country known as a 'hackers haven'.
This would leave one exposed to information interception, abuse of the data, selling that information to other dodgey parties for profit as well as leaving one open to identity theft, ID cloning and other financial scams!
For Yandex to attempt to blackmail their clients in return for a promised return to service-as-normal is an atrocious conditional policy and I, for one, will not accept it!
More to the point, I shall do all I can to make others aware of how I've been treated and how and what potential clients might be opening themselves to by doing business with Yandex.
In closing, Russia as a country, is currently suffering from a seriously poor public relations profile and one would think that their corporates would like to avoid further criticism by embarking on poor international business practices. Even worse, they risk antagonizing neutrals and those who might have favourable opinions of the country and its business integrity and reputation.
So there it is.
It would have been helpful if Yandex had had the courage 'front up' and provide explanations and answers to these rumours and inferences, but as I have experienced, they hide behind a suspiciously deafening silence!
Rant over, I will accept that I have lost years of communications data, but I shall not buckle under Yandex's dictatorial demands of the gun being held to my head. In return, I shall spread the news of their arrogant, unfriendly un-businesslike practices far and wide.
Buyers beware!