Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes
I’ve been using Yahoo Mail for quite sometime and it was basically my trusted web mail service provider for years although my account was just free, I’m very much pleased with it.
Back in the days when I was just starting to grasp the use of email for communication, I started out with Hotmail but then I wasn’t at all pleased because after some inactivity which I’m sure most of you might have encountered, my account had been deactivated although my account dormancy has not exceeded a month. Then there was Eudora mail however I wasn’t really able to use it since the extension was pretty long and hard to remember.
In today’s security challenged world, yours truly is not an exception for having encountered phishing emails but the good thing was that I’m vigilant enough to determine that is was a phishing attempt.
Yahoo does not guarantee full security and neither today’s most powerful email service can guarantee absolute protection however there are useful ways that we can do to help ourselves and increase our protection against identity thefts and cyber criminals.
For Yahoo users, if you still haven’t adopted the use of Yahoo Sign-in Seal while logging into your accounts, now is the right time to take action.
What is Yahoo Sign-in Seal?
Yahoo Sign-in Seal is either an image or a secret message (usually text) that Yahoo will display on your computer to determine that you’re about to log in on a genuine Yahoo site or page.
Once the image, photo, texts, or colors change or differs from what you’ve originally set up, that simply means you’re about to be a victim of phishing schemes.
Protect your account against theft with Yahoo Sign-in Seal
Normally, phishing sites or spoofed sites mimic the original web page unnoticeably thereby stealing confidential information such as login details, credit cards, and bank accounts.
Yahoo Sign-in Seal vouches for authenticity of the page you’re trying to login. The sign-in seal is associated with your PC and not with your Yahoo ID. This way, even if the phisher was able to guess your ID or other related information, they cannot use it to discover your sign-in seal.
“An important fact to remember is that Yahoo will never ask for your ID and password in order to setup or display your sign-in seal.”
The sign-in seal can also be shared to different users—family or friends so they know if their logging into a genuine page if you’re on a shared computer.
Internet cafe and offices however may or may not have a sign in seal in place which means that you have to be wary of putting in your information if you’re unsure that you are on a legitimate website.
Do take note that Yahoo sign in seal won’t protect you from other sites except Yahoo sign in page.
In case you’re not able to see your Yahoo sign in seal, that means you could be on a fraudulent site, or if you’re using a share PC, somebody might have deleted or changed your seal or it could also be that the files or cookies identifying your seal may have been deleted as well.
More security tricks on my upcoming posts so stay tuned.
Suggested for further reading:
- HOW TO: Identify a Phising Site Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes Based on my previous post about using Yahoo Sign-in Seal against password theft, I have mentioned the idea behind phishing websites and the concept of phishing and phishing emails. In conjunction with that topic, this post is aimed at shedding light about the various...
- What does Yahoo Messenger sign-in error 81003016 mean? Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes A few days ago before my ISP broke down; I was trying to sign-in to my Yahoo Messenger chat client when I encountered error 81003016. Unlike most error codes that I’ve encountered, 81003016 rarely occur. From the screenshot below, you can tell that the...
- How to fix Yahoo! Messenger sign in error 81003002 Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes There was one incident noted today by one of our intercafe clients that Yahoo! Messenger is inaccessible. As I figured it out, the sign in problem in Yahoo that he has been getting was error 81003002 which normally advises users to find out if they were...
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
i was using an official id in yahoo and now somebody has hacked it without my knowing?what sense does this make? how can yahoo offer some security to its customers if such happenings occur again..please find a solution to my problem. i want my id back in use safely.
Hi sasikurup,
Based on your story, it seems that your account was compromised. You might have clicked some links on a phishing email that provided password thefts access to your account if I was right. I’d suggest that you report that incident to Yahoo so they can investigate and try to change your password right away to prevent further damage on your end.