Posted by 101livescan on 2/3/13 3:10pm
Msg #453809

Yahoo email account just hacked

If you are in my contacts, you have received an email that says re: Hello. Don't open it as it is infected with a virus...yahoo working on my account to cleanup. I've changed my password.

What else can I do but apologize for the intrusion. Danged hackers!

Reply by Marian_in_CA on 2/3/13 3:24pm
Msg #453810

"What else can I do but apologize for the intrusion."

Not use yahoo email?

Those addresses tend to be higher targets for the bad guys, and easier to get in.

Reply by sueharke on 2/3/13 8:26pm
Msg #453846

I use yahoo mail for rebates, newsletter subscriptions, and mail lists. I will yahoo as a backup email account when gmail and earthlink.net go down.

Reply by ME/NJ on 2/3/13 3:56pm
Msg #453815

Me too, getting out of office replies

My password has a capitol letter and numbers. Twitter and a few other places got hacked this weekend by China.

Reply by 101livescan on 2/3/13 4:06pm
Msg #453820

I always try to make email pw strong, like my java! n/m

Reply by hodgy on 2/3/13 4:16pm
Msg #453821

Re: I always try to make email pw strong, like my java!

Obviously it wasn't strong enough.

Reply by Pro Mobile Notary on 2/3/13 4:31pm
Msg #453825

Re: I always try to make email pw strong, like my java!

It does not matter how strong the passwords are.

The hackers are not hacking individual accounts. They are hacking into the fatally flawed yahoo.com mail servers and then harvesting thousands upon thousands of email addresses and passwords from within the yahoo server environment.

It is irresponsible for people to continuing yahoo.com accounts as they are so easily compromised.

Consider getting a gmail.com. It has never been hacked as far as I know.

Reply by Barb25 on 2/3/13 4:20pm
Msg #453822

This aside, did you get my email?

Reply by 101livescan on 2/3/13 5:21pm
Msg #453830

I did not! try one mo time.

Reply by Barb25 on 2/3/13 5:38pm
Msg #453832

ok pm address I should use when you get a chance.

Reply by Barb25 on 2/3/13 5:55pm
Msg #453833

Resent. Same address. Let me know it you don't get it n/m

Reply by HisHughness on 2/3/13 5:00pm
Msg #453828

My 12-year-old nephew is still irked at me ...

... for sending him an email recommending male enhancement products.

Reply by 101livescan on 2/3/13 5:17pm
Msg #453829

Re: My 12-year-old nephew is still irked at me ...

Well, maybe it's not such a bad business after all. I am changing email accounts, but boy will this be tough in this business.

Reply by MikeC/TX on 2/3/13 11:35pm
Msg #453860

It may not tehnically be a hack

It's called an "exploit", which is something that takes advantage of a weakness in a system. A "hack" would be by someone who somehow got your email address and password and logged into your account. The first thing they do is change the password, so if you were able to get into your email account as you normally would, your account was probably not hacked in the strictest sense of the word and more likely the victim of this exploit.

A video was posted on YouTube recently to show how to do this exploit (it has since been removed), and from what I've read it's a fairly simple thing to do, but it DOES require a user to click on a link in an email or visit a site that has been infected (without the site owner's knowledge) while you have your Yahoo Mail account open in another window in your browser. You may not have even realized that you were doing this, but that's the more likely cause.

The folks at Yahoo reviewed that YouTube video and agreed they had a problem. They supposedly fixed it, but similar exploits are still happening.

As for prevention: Google regularly visits websites and checks for malicious code, and maintains a list of the "attack sites" it finds. I use Firefox as my browser; it has a security option to block these sites, and I have that option enabled. Not sure what other browsers support this, but I would bet that Chrome does. Firefox recently blocked me from a site I visited on a daily basis for years, and there's a detailed report about why.

I also make it a point to never ever EVER click on a link that someone sends me, even if it's from someone I know, unless I'm expecting to get the link from them.

I use both Yahoo and Gmail, and have never had a problem with either, but Gmail is definitely more secure as far as hacking is concerned if you use their two-step login. As far as I know, Gmail is not susceptible to the exploit that is causing problems on Yahoo, but I follow the same security procedures on both.

Hope this helps.

Reply by linda/ca on 2/4/13 12:05am
Msg #453863

Thanks, MikeC/TX! n/m