Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to close a email account when you are not the owner? 1
Anyway, I got them setup with a nice site and Google Apps for business. It took them a bit of time to get use to the Gmail, but they have come around and I think they have seen the light. The old account is a free AOL account which has been around for years. They know the password, but they do not know who set it up nor do they know the security word/phrase. You cannot do anything to the account without that phrase. They want to close the account, because people still have access to it, but when I called AOL to shut it down, they wouldn't talk to me as I was not the account holder nor did I know the pass phrase. I mean, honestly, the system is working as designed, because in the past there have been numerous instances where someone used a bit of social engineering to gain access to an email account and from there, wreck havoc, so I get the apprehensiveness of AOL to deal with me.
Does anyone have any advice? Hell, I would even be willing to throw up on the index page for this business a message saying that we own it and want to close this free mail account, but the tier 1 help desk person over in India is not going to have any idea what I am talking about.