[OUCH] One Billion Yahoo Accounts Hacked

If you think about it...the chances of someone using your information is slim to none. 1 BILLION to choose from and they go after you. You can buy insurance from me and I will cover any damages. Plus in three years MOST people have changed their passwords. But don't let me stop people from overreacting and going paranoid with fear.

Those asking about rule 41. See Bob's article at http://askbobrankin.com/the_noose_around_privacy_is_tightening.html
Much easier to understand than the Cornell version.

After reading the article, I made several attempts to terminate my Yahoo account, the last one being successful. However, I then discovered that Yahoo will keep the account open for up to 3 months in order to prevent malicious activity [sic, sic and sick].

Don't think bad things can't happen to you. I was notified that my charge card was used to make two purchases at Target.com today, without my consent, totaling close to $1,800. Luckily, I had set myself up for notification to my cell phone for charges without my card being present, so that I was able to nip this in the bud with a call to my credit card people. Now I have to wait for a new card.

The news that the Yahoos did a Trump was not bad for me, since my logon info was unique to Yahoo, so I lost nothing.

I have both Yahoo and Gmail accounts. I haven't yet gotten rid of the horribly slow Yahoo account because there are hundreds of old e-mails on there (such as conversations with my late mother and photos sent to me for my web site) that I want to save. Is there a simple way to either download those or forward them in bulk to computer or my Gmail account? I only know how to send one at a time. Then, I could delete Yahoo which is all junk anyway.

I deleted an account with Yahoo a couple of years ago and received an email indicating my account was breached. I'm trying to determine if it was this account that was supposed to be deleted or some other account and cannot find anyone at Yahoo to get a hold of. Is there an email address or phone number that I can contact Yahoo? I cannot find any phone number or email address and the email didn't give a phone number or email address I can use for further information.

You have a name like "Yahoo", and they don't have competent security people. Now, why am I not surprised?

Thanks, Bob, for your thoughts on Yahoo email. My response, seeing I have a few Yahoo email accounts, is to change the passwords on each account and with a different one on each account, and to change the security questions. While other providers of free email may at this time have a better reputation than Yahoo, it may be that Yahoo will now become much more secure due to that public attention over this debacle.

You mean like they became more security minded after having 500 Million Accounts Hacked? What exactly are you smoking? It is apparently very powerful stuff.

I've had my Yahoo account for 15 years. Yahoo (yes, I have also wondered about the name choice!) used to be more usable. I still like being able to change the background look. Yahoo Groups used to be marvelous...now they have just about died. Like Robyn, I have thousands of emails stored on Yahoo, even though I periodically try to tidy up. And like Mike McLaughlin, I sort of feel like if nothing awful happened in the past three and a half years, it probably won't. However, I guess I will just change my password and keep that Yahoo account for now. With all its faults, I actually like Yahoo just as much or more than my Hotmail, since MSN monkeyed around with Hotmail.

I tried to go to Yahoo and delete my account but I had just put Sticky Pass on and it had added every account ever used on my computer, including my deceased son's Yahoo account. Sticky Pass defaulted to my son's account and even when I would change it to my user name and password, when I clicked the button, Sticky Pass reverted it back to my son's name and then said the password was wrong. In frustration, I got signed into my son's account via having Yahoo send an email with security code to my email address which was the alternate for his account. Used that and figured out the horribly moving numbers and after two tries managed to delete my son's account. However, StickyPass still has his account listed and keeps defaulting to that so I can't sign into my Yahoo to delete it. I am not liking Sticky Pass at all, which I just bought using the special in your newletter. It's too intrusive and I can't make it stop when I don't want to use it. Am in contact with StickyPass to try to resolve this problem, but I've already had to remove it from my Samsung Phone because it was kept making me put in my Master Passord at every new internet page, after I'd already signed in, and then started constantly crashing. Woe is me.

For Robyn ... take a look at Mozilla Thunderbird. It may fit your requirements.

You can download all of your mail from Yahoo to your own computer.

Bob doesn't seem to have an article about it, but my other go to guy, Leo Notenboom does.

https://askleo.com/thunderbird_a_free_open_source_and_powerful_email_client/

Yahoo is hilarious.

I get repeated notices from Yahoo because I'm using "an outdated or less secure sign-in," i.e., Outlook 2016 with an app password.

Yahoo wants me to use its very own secure app for my mail.

I want Yahoo to get its act together.

Neither Yahoo nor I are likely to get what we want.

I have Yahoo's version of 2FA enabled, but I don't much care if the account is hacked. I have two or three advertising newsletters and one Yahoo group mailing that come to my Yahoo address. Indeed, the account does contain the minimum amount of personal information, but the privacy of that information is on the ship that sailed with Anthem, Home Depot, Target, and several other trustworthy--haha--sites that were breached in recent years.

My real mail goes elsewhere. I wouldn't entrust Yahoo with mail I care about if it were the last provider on the planet.

That's why I always recommend using a email client to download all the emails, via POP3/IMAP (for example, using Thunderbird, like Jonathan said) with the setting to download and 'delete from server' all the messages. This applies even if you use Gmail, Outlook or any other service. And about this hack, I think all this it's only a "chess move" to discredit and make the Yahoo brand fail, and when they said that Yahoo had an email monitoring system installed, makes you believe or think Microsoft and Google are pure saints (and that they doesn't have the option to read your emails too). Wake up people, this "hack" or "leak" doesn't change anything for end-users. On the contrary, I think Yahoo made someone "upset" for something we don't know, and is now making the brand/company pay for that. And if you currently use Yahoo and want to close your account, don't desperately go to Gmail or Outlook, use another less known email provider. I don't believe a hack that happened 3 years ago, goes public today without a reason. IMHO, this makes me love Yahoo even more.

Thanks for the latest disaster news from Yahoo!, especially the link to the Krebs report. The bad news about horrifically slack industry security simply keeps coming.

Of course, industry has no excuse, and easily can find good security consultants. Attribute much of its failure to a cynical corporate cost/benefit analysis customarily substituted for actual due diligence with customer data.

Perhaps, now, we understand the shout of "Yahoo!" came from both Yahoo! managers anticipating even greater dollar returns from their refusal to invest in tight security, and from hackers anticipating the same.

In regard to Yahoo! and AT&T, I closed my own BellSouth account long ago, about one year after it was engulfed and devoured by AT&T. In that brief interval, AT&T demonstrated it had bitten off more than it could chew, and customer integration into the AT&T system using Yahoo! was a precarious process, even when it worked.

* A year after leaving AT&T, on reviewing my old AT&T email files for pruning and file management, I found my old AT&T email boxes were still active! They continued active for about one year after that.

On April 21, 2014 AOL announced it got hacked. At least 2% of all email accounts seem to have been affected. On September 10, 2014, Gmail announced that at least 5 million of its accounts were hacked. And so on, and so on... It is common to listen to these announcements and people cancel their accounts here and there thinking that will solve the problem.

First of all, your account is never canceled, but deactivated, which means your data is still in their database. And hackers can still access it if they want to.

Second, the more you switch from one email to the other, there more you expose your information out there to become more available for hackers to find you.

Third, if it's not a hacker from another country, it's the company's themselves hacking each other to discredit their competitors.

The only thing to do is follow these steps if you think you're a victim of identity theft.

https://www.usa.gov/identity-theft

Bob, _if_ you ever do a series of on-line videos (a la Leo Notenboom), please, please, please remember us deaf/hard of hearing folks and use captioning. My eyes 'hear' just fine, but my ears don't 'see' too well. Thanks very much for all that you do.

Thanks for the heads-up, Bob. Have let Yahoo linger as a stand-by web-link resource out of shear laziness but your horror story prompted me to give it an unceremonious heave-ho. Even as I did, I got a lock-up scare message to call some "microsoft" help number. The only way out was to ignore the"Do NOT shut down your computer" warning and shut down. Adios Yahoo.

Could you please give directions for moving my Yahoo emails to Gmail....and, will this include files ?

Blonde tech dummy over here...lol

Thanks in advance...
Nan

Could you please give directions for moving my Yahoo emails to Gmail....and, will this include files ?

Blonde tech dummy over here...lol

Thanks in advance...
Nan