Yahoo email closing???

coffeehound

I find Y! pretty good at knowing good from bad emails now, though there was a time many years ago when spam wasn't well handled, but that was probably the same for all providers

TELLIT01

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

Scam was my immediate suspicion but then the thought crept in that these emails were labelled 'message from yahoo'.... and that SURELY yahoo would be alive to any scammers actively using the yahoo name, sent to yahoo addresses...

... all of which just goes to show what a crappy outfit yahoo is, I suppose...

For a period of about 3 weeks I was getting several e-mails a day claiming to be from McAfee telling me my cover was ending etc.  The giveaway for me is that I've never used McAfee.  Surely McAfee would be alive to scammers.....  Apparently not, or they don't care.

alidai

TELLIT01 said:

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

Scam was my immediate suspicion but then the thought crept in that these emails were labelled 'message from yahoo'.... and that SURELY yahoo would be alive to any scammers actively using the yahoo name, sent to yahoo addresses...

... all of which just goes to show what a crappy outfit yahoo is, I suppose...

For a period of about 3 weeks I was getting several e-mails a day claiming to be from McAfee telling me my cover was ending etc.  The giveaway for me is that I've never used McAfee.  Surely McAfee would be alive to scammers.....  Apparently not, or they don't care.

How on earth are McAfee meant to know that a scammer (not them) are sending emails (not from their platform) to you (not their platform) pretending to be McAfee (again, not them)??

CoastingHatbox

Deleted_User said:

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

Scam was my immediate suspicion but then the thought crept in that these emails were labelled 'message from yahoo'.... and that SURELY yahoo would be alive to any scammers actively using the yahoo name, sent to yahoo addresses...

... all of which just goes to show what a crappy outfit yahoo is, I suppose...

Anybody can set any "name" against an email address, but you need to check the actual email address it came from - it is a common way the scammers work so you need to learn how to read the actual email address rather than the name labelled against it if you are to avoid scammers in the future - this is a serious skill you need to stay safe online so don't ignore this:

Here is a typical one in my spam box that says it comes from ASDA supermarket:



But when I click to check the email address then clearly it is not from Asda.



Check the email address of the one your received and you will find it isn't from Yahoo at all.

This is not really sufficient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack

And that's even assuming a bad actor has to stoop to such levels. There are methods to prevent email address spoofing, but this relies upon the owner of the domain setting them up properly and the receiving email server implementing the validation correctly.

The only way to ensure email is valid is to using PKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure

A signature is attached to the email, which has been generated using a private key that only the sender has access to. The recipient of the email obtains the public key which can be used to check the authenticity of the email and the signature. There are some people out there that do add PGP signatures to the email that they send but it is still an uncommon practice.

Failing that, if you are suspicious of an email, you can check the headers. Find the IP address of the originating email server and do a `whois` lookup against that IP address to see who owns it. It's not actually a good method but, alongside other metadata in the email headers, it can help answer questions about the real origin of an email.

TELLIT01

alidai said:

TELLIT01 said:

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

Scam was my immediate suspicion but then the thought crept in that these emails were labelled 'message from yahoo'.... and that SURELY yahoo would be alive to any scammers actively using the yahoo name, sent to yahoo addresses...

... all of which just goes to show what a crappy outfit yahoo is, I suppose...

For a period of about 3 weeks I was getting several e-mails a day claiming to be from McAfee telling me my cover was ending etc.  The giveaway for me is that I've never used McAfee.  Surely McAfee would be alive to scammers.....  Apparently not, or they don't care.

How on earth are McAfee meant to know that a scammer (not them) are sending emails (not from their platform) to you (not their platform) pretending to be McAfee (again, not them)??

My wording of the last bit was poor.  I shouldn't have put the 'Apparently not....' section.  I was trying, and failing miserably, to demonstrate that the logic used by 'Rainbow' was seriously flawed.  No company can protect totally against scammers using their name.  If they could, there wouldn't be any scammers.