Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

Wow!! Here in London the weather has definitely taken a change for the better. The latter half of the bank holiday was very nice and past couple of days have been real corkers.

Now that spring is here, maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning. And what better to clean up or freshen up than your Yahoo! Mail account. One way to do that would be to change your password. What better time to make your account more secure? No better time than the present.

While I’m at it, here are some more tips to help you be more secure when you’re online (and these apply for the whole of the Internet, not just Yahoo!):
1. PINs, Login Details, Banking Passwords, etc:
- Never write them down or share them with anyone.
- Never send them in replies to unsolicited emails claiming to be from your bank, EBay, even Yahoo! for that matter. Yahoo! and most other companies will never send you unsolicited emails asking you for any personal details.

2. Contact Details:
- Change your password immediately in the case that you think maybe someone has stolen your password.
- Make sure we have your current details, particularly your postal code and alternate email address. And make sure you know what they are too. We’ll need you to verify these should you ever have to ask to reset your password. All you need to do is select ‘My Account’ then the ‘Edit’ links next to ‘Member Information’ and ‘Address/Contact Information’ to review and amend your details.

These two things can reduce the risk of your personal information being compromised. Of course you can find more information and more tips to keep you safe online, in our security center.

Happy (safe) emailing!!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

We all get some unwelcome emails from time to time. You probably do what I do and just press delete, but sometimes you need a bit more muscle on your side to deal with them.

That’s where the Address Blocker comes in handy. It stops emails from addresses you don’t want to hear from. Just what you need? Then here’s how to do it.

All-new Yahoo! Mail users:
Click Options, then on the list on the left click Spam. Right in the middle of the page you’ll find a space in the “Blocked Addresses” section. All you’ve got to do is put any email addresses you don’t want to get mail from in here, then click Add. There you go. Told you it was easy. Here’s what it should look like:

Classic version of Yahoo! Mail users:
Click Options, then find the link for “Block Addresses“. Click the link for “Block Addresses” and enter any email addresses or domains you want to block. Then click Add Block. Just as easy for the classic mail users as the all-new mail users. Here’s what it looks like:

Happy emailing!
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

For this week’s post, I’m enlisting a guest host. I’ve asked Mark, who leads our anti-spam team, to share some news about what he and his team are up to, to help combat the spammers of the world. So without further ado, here’s our resident “Spam Czar”…

Happy Emailing
Andrew - Yahoo! Mail Team

We know you hate receiving spam in your mailbox, and we’re working hard to help. While there may always be bad guys trying to get their messages through to you, at Yahoo! we’re tightening up on our spam controls in ‘08, and in fact we’ve already begun rolling out a significant new defense system (and it’s only the start of February).

One reprehensible tactic spammers use is hijacking thousands of innocent home computers and forcing them to send out spam messages in the background, often without the owners even knowing! Collectively, these “zombie” computers spew out millions of spam messages a day, and that’s something that has to stop.

Starting today, we will be taking the bold move of rejecting mail from these zombie computers, using information from a number of third-party companies and ISPs to help in the identification. When these unauthorized computers attempt a connection to our back-end mail servers, they’ll be politely informed that their unsolicited mail is not welcome at Yahoo!. (This change is on the back-end only; users connecting through the Classic or All-New Yahoo! Mail web interfaces will not be blocked by this change.)

For example, consumers with a dynamic IP address will no longer be able to send mail directly to Yahoo! servers (machines with geeky, technical names like “a.mx.mail.yahoo.com”), and must instead use their ISP’s designated mail gateway. Again, users interacting through the web interface or the Yahoo! Mail POP/SMTP/IMAP services will *not* be affected by this change; aside from the spammers, this change will only impact people running a secret, unauthorized mail server in their basement.

It’s just one of the many steps we’re planning in the upcoming weeks and months to continue to improve your Yahoo! Mail experience, and we’ll be checking in here periodically on the YMail Blog to keep you up-to-date with further developments.

One reminder: If you do receive a spam message in your inbox — or an important message ends up in your spam folder — please help us out by clicking the “This is Spam” or “This is Not Spam” button on it. Clicking these buttons immediately sends a series of notifications to our SpamGuard systems and personnel so that we can correct the problem, and is the best indicator of how well we’re doing in our mission to ensure you receive all of the mail you want and none that you don’t.

Wishing you a Happy New Year from Yahoo! and SpamGuard,

Mark R.
“Spam Czar”
Yahoo! Mail

P.S. Note for geeks and system administrators: In the rare case that you do feel we’ve made an incorrect classification of your mail, please pay close attention to any SMTP reply code our servers send back to you, as these will contain essential troubleshooting information and instructions on how to report a problem. Information for legitimate bulk mailers can always be found at http://postmaster.yahoo.com.