Confused - BT/AOL which?

Your help would be appreciated.
I have a friend who moved earlier this year - up until that time her email address was xxxxx@aol.com.
As I understand it, AOL was part of Talktalk at that stage.

She moved, and for whatever reason TT were unable to service her new home address.
In response she then established an account with BT - who said it was possible to retain her aol email address - this she chose to do.

There is now a need to change her email password - (she still wishes to retain the aol email address) the question is
1 - will the password need to be changed via the aol site
2 - will the password need to be changed via the bt site

BT have supplied her with a BT hub - that has worked satisfactorily since the change.
Regrettably someone has now managed to get into her address book and is sending out mail in her name. I realise that a password change is not the sole answer to her problem but it is a start.
Thanks in advance for any info you can provide
C

For my AOL customer we manage her password at AOL.com much as you would if you you had a gmail or outlook.com address.

AOL and Yahoo are all part of Verizon's OATH product offering.

If you go to AOL.com you should be able to sign in. If you can't then one of the vendor sites will need to be accessed to manage password.

Myself I would not be getting vendor supplied email addresses, you said she got a BT account. These always become an issue when you move suppliers and they can use your email as a reason to stay with their service.

True having a BT account means she can likely phone them and they can reset password. A properly set up outlook or gmail account can have the password reset through self service using text messages or alternate email addresses.

Not sure how they gained access. Please sweep her computer for malware, ensure she uses a complex password (which can be achieved through lenght), and if available 2FA. Assume she has access to texting.

Thank you both for your input.
Visited person concerned, and can now confirm that the password to be changed was the BT one - which was easy to do. Running various scans also revealed a great number of nasties.
Thanks again
C

Hello again -
regrettably the problem has not gone away - for approx 2 weeks (after password change) - all seemed to be well.
In the last few days however, more mail is being sent during the night and early morning. People in her address book are receiving a huge message in red, warning them to be aware that the mail is suspicious.
If you are reading this for the first time, you need to start at the beginning to get the full nature of the problem.

The lady has now established a gmail account/address.
The question is - what to do next? The aol password has been changed (within the bt address entry) - to no effect.
Does she delete the address book?
Does she just remove the aol email address?

Does she need to contact aol? If this sounds strange, please read the unusual set up reported in the earlier posts.

I do hope this makes sense, and look forward to receiving any advice. The lady is an elderly person, so is quite troubled by this issue. Unfortunately she lives approx 100 miles away from me, so I cant give direct assistance.
Thanks in advance
C

First we have to establish if the email is really coming from her email address or it is just her email address being spoofed.

Get one of the recipients to cursor over the from address. It may say carol@aol.com (just an example) but when you cursor over the address you will see some strange address like biz@takemetoads.boks

If the bad people stole her address book then there is little she can do.

Yahoo had this happen and I still get emails from all kinds of people that no longer have a yahoo address.

If she has a gmail address and she has moved all her contacts there would be little harm in deleting the address book. Keep a copy of the exported addresses in case you need to restore.

See this Someone's Sending from My Email Address! How Do I Stop Them?! - Ask Leo!. Look at the headers and raw info of the email. That will show that it is being spoofed. If their email was hacked, those emails would show up in sent items.