Yeah, there's no faking of the anger. On average, we get fifty or more e-mails each day at the public e-mail account for this site that claim to be from Yahoo but aren't from Yahoo. This is even more confusing as Yahoo has forced everyone to update to a new version. In previous versions, even in the inbox, you could see that it wasn't actually from Yahoo. The real e-mail address would show up.
In the current version of Yahoo Mail, you have to open it and put your cursor . Let's use a recent example. This was sent to the public account last night.
If you move your mouse over "Yahoo" (in the inbox, it won't work on the screen snap above), you find that "Yahoo" in this case is actually pineridgeadultcare@yahoo.com. And the "Click here" in the e-mail does not go to a yahoo page but to something which begins "lsad2."
It's irritating that these attempts at phishing come through to begin with.
The e-mailer pretends to be Yahoo and thinks up some reason to 'warn you.' In the case above, two incoming e-mails have been stopped unless you "Click here." They also love to use claims that you're about to lose your Yahoo account or that you must upgrade or enter personal information for some new rule.
This is not "SPAM." This is an attempt to hijack your identity, your computer, your money whatever.
This is an attempt at a criminal act and we think Yahoo should take it seriously because it's (a) pretending to be Yahoo and (b) usually coming from a Yahoo e-mail account. (E-mail accounts can be hacked. The public account for this site got hacked earlier this year for 24 hours or so with the hacker replying to various people who'd written. I noted it here as soon as we found out and corrected the hacker's lie to various journalists who had written that I wanted to do an interview with them.)
We don't think Yahoo takes this seriously.
Most Yahoo users can tell you that reporting "Spam" by hitting the Yahoo button doesn't even do any good. It still arrives, from the same account, but goes into your junk mail folder instead of your main folder. The spam function in Yahoo is no more than, on your cell phone, hitting "ignore."
We think Yahoo needs to take phishing scams where the person is using a Yahoo e-mail account and pretending to be Yahoo. But they're not taking it seriously.
This afternoon at the Justice Dept, I was told that the FBI is joint partners in the Internet Crime Complaint Center (partners with the National White Collar Crime Center) and that this is where you can go to file a complaint (online) about these scams (crimes). You can file it you receive an e-mail like the above and don't click. You can file if you receive an e-mail like the one above and do click and you're harmed.
Myself? I'd prefer Yahoo had a complaint system that led Yahoo to handle the matter internally. I think if you pose as Yahoo, at the very least your Yahoo e-mail account should be closed down.
But Yahoo clearly has no interest in policing themselves. So for those who are experiencing this problem and want some form of action, you can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
If you already knew it, good for you. I didn't. I'm never embarrassed to admit that. Other people are also in the dark. Many have have written this site and Third complaining that Yahoo had no way of addressing this issue.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
phishing
crime
