Scammers, take notice

Posted May 30th, 2008 at 10:28 am by Mark Risher, Yahoo! Mail

 16 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

As we’ve said before, no one ever wins the Yahoo! Lottery. And that’s simply because there is no Yahoo! Lottery. To protect you from these scammers, we’re going after them ourselves.

We recently filed a lawsuit that ought to send an unmistakable message to spammers masquerading as Yahoo! lottery commissioners, sending emails to unsuspecting users about having won a mythical jackpot. And in order to claim that jackpot, these “lucky” users simply need to hand over personal data like passwords, credit card information, and social security numbers. Some “winners” are even duped into sending money for processing and mailing charges.

We won’t tolerate these hoax emails or having our brand used to deceive you, and we’re seeking maximum damages permissible by law. This lawsuit (one of nearly ten suits to date) is part of a multi-faceted approach we’ve been taking to combat spam by supporting anti-spam legislation, creating technologies like DomainKeys, collaborating with industry leaders, and increasing consumer awareness. Consider this: every day, we block more than one billion spam and phishing messages — that’s more that four times the number of first class letters the US Postal Service delivers each day.

Besides what we’re doing on our end, here are some of the things you can do to protect yourself:

• Protect your email address like your phone number: Give it out selectively and only to people you trust. Don’t post it in public places like message boards or chat rooms. And try disposable email addresses (like our AddressGuard) for things like shopping or selling things online.
• Just say no to junk mail: Report unsolicited email by clicking on the spam button in the toolbar at the top of your inbox or message. This reports the contents so that Yahoo! Mail or your service provider can take appropriate action and potentially block them from reaching your inbox in the future.
• If it’s too good to be true, it probably is: Don’t be fooled by cash prizes or that prince who needs your help smuggling millions of dollars out of his country. They’re scams. Don’t reply, don’t click, and don’t give away any personal information.
• That’s no warning: See a pop-up ad with a warning about your computer? Or have an email from a “computer expert” warning you of a virus? They’re usually hoaxes from unscrupulous folks. Ignore them and don’t follow any steps described unless you’re sure the threat is real.
• Create a sign-in seal: Sign-in seals are a new safeguard offered by Yahoo! and many financial institutions to help protect your login. A sign-in seal is a secret message or image that you create so you can be sure you’re logging into your account and not a phishing site. To create your seal, go to any sign-in page across Yahoo! and look for the box with keys above your login.

You can find more tips on our anti-spam resource site. It’s a jungle out there, but there are plenty of ways to defend your inbox. Plus we’ve got your back.

Mark Risher
Anti-Spam Czar, Yahoo! Mail

Tagged: litigation, spam, tips, yahoo! mail

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16 Comments Add your own

kscott | May 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am

Mark — you’ve got my back, really?

As someone who has attempted to use Y! Mail from the very beginning, it is clear that Yahoo! hasn’t been able to protect my Inbox from even the most basic attacks.

I just logged in to my Inbox to find 2400 spam messages (Cialis, clean your colon, classmates.com, celebrities, cash confirmation, carnival cruise — and those are just the “C” entries). That’s the Inbox, not the Spam folder.

How do these spam messages continue to get to my inbox?
- I have had SpamGuard active for years.
- I have never publicly posted my email address.
- I have popup blockers active and ignore ads.
- I report spam by clicking your stupid button.

You claim to block billions of msgs, but until Y! restores protection to the basic Y! ID and respect the spam reported by users, your service will continue to accumulate unusable and abandoned email accounts like mine.

I look forward to that day when I can log into a spam-free inbox – that would be blog-worthy.

- kscott

Libran Lover | May 31st, 2008 at 8:49 am

Yahoo should not blog, not even talk about spam until they provide adequate spam protection to the Yahoo Mail Inbox. What Yahoo has now is TOTALLY USELESS. Yahoo should talk less and do more to protect the Inbox from spam.

Mandy | May 31st, 2008 at 10:55 am

Kirk, your ID “kscott” is so short and sweet that it’s quite likely getting spammed by sequentially generated target adresses (ascott, bscott, cscott, … @yahoo.com). Spammers pump their mails out by the million, not caring whether the address exists or not, and yours happens to exist. Also if you’ve left your Yahoo ID just anywhere publicly, such as your 360° profile or even here in this comment, spammers assume that it has a mail account associated with it and try to target that. And once an adress has been “burned” that way and landed on an adress list, its spam amount likely skyrockets sooner or later with no way back. Standard mechanisms of spam.

And for that matter, Yahoo’s spam filtering does work, and quite well at that. I use one Yahoo ID as a forwarding endpoint from other pre-filtered adresses I have, and what little spam still makes it through my pre-filters, routinely ends up in Yahoo’s Bulk folder. No spam blocker is perfect, but claiming Yahoo’s wouldn’t work is unreal.

Hollywood Celebrity | May 31st, 2008 at 12:39 pm

I remember 3 years back i received first mail saying you won Yahoo!Lottery,I actually think its from yahoo only and i wish to pay but i was luck that time i am not using credit card so i not able to pay, soon i get another mail and i realize its fake email they are not yahoo.
most of such Scammers are from Nigeria.
so most of time they just copy website design and log so it look like real yahoo, people those not seen URL will be trapped by such fake email so its very important to see URL of any email as some time they may label URl with yahoo and when someone click it land to other site

William | June 3rd, 2008 at 1:43 am

I just received a mail as below:

FROM: THE DESK OF THE CLAIMS DIRECTOR,YAHOO MSN INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS / PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,

This is to inform you that you have been selected for a cash prize of£500,000.00 Pounds. This email promotion was held on the 30TH ofMAY 2008 in London United Kingdom.

To file for your claims you are to contactour REMMITANCE DIRECTOR for further information.
NAME: MR WEST NEWTON (REMMITANCE DIRECTOR)EMAIL: west_newton12@live.co.ukTell: +44-795-516-7964Fax: +44-870-974-6645

You are hereby advised to provide our claims department with thefollowing information: REF Number, Batch number, Winning Email Address.Thereafter you will directed by your remittance officer on how to claimyour prize. YAHOO MSN PROMOTION is a free service that does not require you toregister or be a Yahoo registered user before winning. You havereceived this message from Yahoo International PROMOTIONS prize deptbecause you have visited one of our sponsored sites and havevoluntarily given your email address to receive mails from theirsponsors. Your email address was selected along side ten lucky winnersaround the world who have there email voluntarily given to receivemails from various site that we sponsor around the world. To View Some Of Our Past Lucky Winner Click: **http://img.timeinc.net/TFK/media/news/2006a/060222_lottery_hor.jpg**http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2005/09/23/lottery-winners-inside.jpg**http://www.louisianalottery.com/assets/images/newsroom/Lotto%20Winners/CarlosCase2.jpg**http://www.javoue.com/presse/yahoo_javoue.jpg Mrs.Sherrell Barber (Zonal Coordinator)YAHOO MSN PROMOTIONS

I believe is a scam.Please check

jonathan | June 3rd, 2008 at 9:42 pm

yippeeeeeeee

Andrew S | June 6th, 2008 at 1:01 am

http://lottery.yahoo.com/
Yahoo! Lottery
(ok…Results)

Anyway, I just wanted to add that “protecting your email address” is no longer a very useful tactic in avoiding spam. Most email addresses these days are gathered from windows computers that have viruses (something like 20-40% of windows machines are compromised) or other security problems. The viruses will go through the email on the computer and in the web cache (for webmail) to scan for email addresses.

So, if you send email to someone who reads it on a computer that is compromised, then your email address will get on spam lists!

Tim | June 13th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

I have given up on YAHOO. I will no longer use their email service, so I will no longer need to set yahoo as my start page, and I will no longer use their search engine.

I’m averaging 12 spam emails a day in my INBOX and the first 3 characters of my email are “c2c”. That isn’t common, it isn’t a name, and I don’t know how it could be associated with anything common. I also don’t post my email in forums, but this is getting rediculous. 1 or 2 a day MAYBE, I’ll click their useless report spam button, but Ive seen emails from the same domain continue to come through.

YAHOO has got a little too big for its britches and customer satisfaction has been left to the wayside. Just imagine how many GIGS of data are abandoned email accounts full of spam.

sudhakar mishra | September 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am

how we get secure as emailblogyahoo

SHARON | September 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm

WHY WITH ALL THE NEW TECHNOLOGY CAN’T WE STOP THESE PEOPLE? I GET SO MUCH DIRTY SPAM & WIN MILLIONS & MILLIONS EVERYDAY AND WE ALL JUST LAUGH! WHY CAN’T SOMETHING BE DONE TO STOP THIS??? I’VE EVEN GOTTEN EMAILS THAT THEIR POSING AS THE FBI AND OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN’T SEEM TO CARE!!!!!!!

jenny bacani | October 31st, 2008 at 5:29 am

thank u

tank | November 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 am

if i won were is my money

pattyvealey | November 8th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

scammers take notice

ANOWAR | November 29th, 2008 at 6:49 am

JOINED TO YAHOO EMAIL LOOTERY

ANOWAR | November 29th, 2008 at 6:53 am

E.A.A.S AUSTRALIAN LOTTERY 2008 I AM WON OF THE EMAIL LOTTERY. WHERE MY LOTTERY CHAKE DRAFT PRISE.

pOty | September 24th, 2009 at 6:42 am

If there’s no Yahoo! Lottery, I think there’s <a href="http://howtowinlottery.sosblog.com/"UK lottery! There are true online lottery and this is no scam. But please be aware of scam sites.