My Western Union account was hacked today and money sent to the Philippines

Well, I am trying World Remit now.

First experience was very reassuring. I like the fact that they text the beneficiary and that they require the beneficiary's full address. Fast, too.

That is very reassuring.

WU did not pick up on anything at all! They have now lost a customer and World Remit have gained one.

I can understand why you want to leave WU, but another idea is to still use them but to use the WU high street shops and give them £ cash to then convert and send to Phils.
My wife does this all the time without any problems.

Is Western Union (still) subject to regulation in the UK? If so, it might be worthwhile dropping a note to the Financial Services Regulator and let him know your experiences and point out their lapses in security.

Good point - clearly they are far too relaxed about their exposure to abuse by money launderers.

We don't send big amounts, Jim so the rate is acceptable.
Also, there is a WU near to where my wife's mother's boat arrives on the mainland.

I am now really impressed with World Remit. I just made a payment to my ex-mother in law, to cover college fees for my ex-niece, her granddaughter, who was raped a couple of months ago - World Remit telephoned me within ten minutes of debiting my card, to check that the beneficiary was correct, because it was not the same as before, to check that I had indeed made the transaction and to ask if i was happy with their service. This never happened with WU.

What really impressed me was that they rang my landline home number, not my mobile, and they did so after debiting my card but BEFORE remitting the funds. In other words had the transaction not been "legit" they could have reversed the transaction and re-credited the card.

It really doesn't matter how much you send guys..
Just think..You are all contributing to the Filipino third world economy..
One way or another.
Big thanks.
We all love you!

If your goal is protect your security in the future, It might be more pertinent to ask, what is the practical alternative to AOL Mail? It seems that these crooks probably gained access to your WU account only by hacking your AOL account first.

AFAIK, AOL Mail, whilst offering secure (HTTPS) login, switches back to standard HTTP, once login is complete. That is a real hazard, especially if you use unencrypted public WiFi access. And I don't think AOL Mail offers 2nd factor authentication for the sign-in process either.

For security, the only free mainstream Email providers worth considering are: Gmail and Outlook (formerly Hotmail). They both offer full HTTPS sessions by default (not just sign-in) and optional 2 factor authentication (just make sure you enable it)

GMail - formerly GoogleMail - is widely used by scammers and spammers.

I have an old email account that gets spammed with up to 300 emails per day and which I empty every few weeks. Just checked and not single email shows as coming from either Gmail or Hotmail addresses. Quite a few from Yahoo addresses but most were from what looked like compromised email accounts on commercial websites.

Excellent point. Thank you.