Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

Multiple email accounts dragging you down? Do you have too many contact lists in too many places? Following in the footsteps of Craig Wilson’s post about the great new features in Yahoo! Contacts, I want to add to his list. We have made it easy for you to import, manage and consolidate your different contact lists into your Yahoo! Contacts.

A simple, easy to use form walks you through the steps of importing the various contact lists you’ve created over the years directly into your Yahoo! Contacts. You can choose to import your address books from Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and more.

You can find the contacts import tool in the ‘Options’ menu of the new Yahoo! Mail and on the Yahoo! Contacts welcome page. Or to get started right away click this link: http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/transfercontacts

Import contact lists from multiple providers in one go, or do one at a time. After a couple more clicks you’re done. And don’t worry if you have duplicate contacts. The ‘Clean up duplicates’ tool in Yahoo! Contacts makes it easy to combine any duplicate contact entries into one.

If you’re moving to Yahoo! Mail from another provider, you can even choose to send an email alert to the contacts that you are importing. Once the import process completes, your newly imported contacts are conveniently set up as a group. To view them, just open your contacts list in Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Contacts. Click ‘View All Contacts’ and you’ll find them grouped by the email service.

The import contacts tool is an easy and effective way to combine your various address books into one, easily managed contact list. Just like Apps in Mail, this is another tool to help you be more productive, more social and stay better connected.

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Congratulations to our colleagues down the hall! They have officially taken the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger 10 out of beta and the general download is available from the Messenger site.

The latest version of Messenger adds a number of great features and enhancements. Here are the highlights:

• Hi-quality video calling – This has to be my favorite. Incredible quality video calls to friends and family right in the IM window.
• Yahoo Updates view of your contacts list – If your friends and family are sharing their status updates, you can view a live stream of what they’re up to on the ‘Y! Updates’ tab of the Messenger Window.
• Yahoo! Messenger in your language – Messenger users using the U.S. version can now choose from 16 different languages. Just choose a new language from the sign-in screen when you start messenger.

Don’t forget there are 29 local language versions available, so choose the version that’s right for you. You can download the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger here: http://messenger.yahoo.com/download/.

To find out more, and for a video tutorial, visit the Yahoo! Messenger blog.

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A few of you have been reporting that you are having issues with the spell-checker in the new version of Yahoo! Mail. I just want to let you know that we are aware of the issue and will have a fix out soon.

In the meantime, you can use the built-in spell checking functionality of some of today’s modern browsers. For example, the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari all have in-line spell checkers. If you don’t have one of those browsers installed or don’t want to install one, you can use classic Yahoo! Mail until we have rolled out the fix (from ‘Options’ click the ‘Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic’ link).

You can read more on our help pages, or contact out customer care team.

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The Yahoo! Mail team and I have used this blog many times to keep you informed about how you can stay safe and protect your personal information on the Internet and in Yahoo! Mail. We’ve posted on the best ways to recognize and avoid phishing scams and how to avoid falling victim to lottery attacks. We also use several measures to help you protect your account information including secure login pages, the ability to set up a sign-in seal, and scanning attachments for viruses.

There is another threat that exists called the ‘cookie replay’ attack, where attackers gain access to your account using public WiFi networks. It is an industry wide issue that can affect any Web site including Yahoo! Mail. While this threat does exist, I have not heard of any of our users complaining about being a victim.

I try to be as safe as I can when online. Here are some things you should do to help protect you against this type of exploit:

• Always be cautious when accessing your email account when using public WiFi networks. Consider accessing your account only on secure networks.
• If you need to use public WiFi networks to access your email, use a POP email client to access your mail via SSL. Yahoo! Mail UK users have the ability to send and receive mail via email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others (our friends on the other side of the ‘pond’ will need to sign up for Mail Plus). Make sure to set up your client with SSL security for the best account security.
• Sign up to a personal VPN service (or, if they offer it, use your work’s VPN)

We feel strongly about offering you protections to safeguard your account. We are committed to developing solutions to tackle this industry wide security issue. And we hope to have a solution in sometime in 2010.

I will to keep you up-to-date on the progress of that solution. Until then, be smart when accessing your account via public WiFi networks. If you must access your email on a public WiFi network, try to use POP via SSL or a personal VPN client.

More general information on security can be found at http://security.yahoo.com, and for security tips for mail visit http://uk.antispam.yahoo.com/. As always, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

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A small fraction of Yahoo! Mail users may have experienced intermittent email issues earlier today, October 26, but the problem has now been resolved. We believe this was an isolated incident. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you are still experiencing any problems with Yahoo! Mail, please contact our Customer Care Team.

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Today’s post comes from reader suggestion (who will have to remain anonymous, because I seem to have misplaced his email, ping, message from Facebook, LinkedIn etc.), who reminded me that, ‘with all of the fantastic new updates we’ve been releasing lately, like the new social features and Apps in Yahoo! Mail, we sometimes overlook the great features that have been around for ages.’ Features which make Yahoo! Mail the best (not just my opinion) email service around. One such feature is the ability to add an extra mail address to your Yahoo! Mail account.

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers…

What is it?
An extra mail address is a second Yahoo! email address that is linked to your existing Yahoo! Mail account. It’s another email address, just like your primary one, that you can use to send and receive mail from, while using the exact same Inbox you’re used to. You can even make it the default address that you send email from if you want.

Why do I want one?
I can think of a number of things that you could use the extra mail address for. Here’s just a couple:

• Let’s say you’re looking for a new job. If you originally signed up for a mail address like barry_manilow_fan@yahoo.com, you might think twice about putting that at the top of your resume. You can create an extra mail address that is more appropriate for a job search or other business correspondence.
• Maybe you just want to have a second email address. There’s a great deal of convenience in being able to check for new mail without having to login and out of two separate accounts.

Sounds good, how do I get one?
It’s easy to set up and start using. From your Yahoo! Mail account click ‘Options’ then ‘Mail Options’ in the upper-right part of your Mailbox. From the Mail Options screen click ‘Accounts’ then ‘Add or edit an Account’. At the bottom of the new window click the ‘Get Started’ link under ‘Extra Mail Address’.

That sounds easy, but I’m still not sure. What else?

• You can easily send from this extra email address by selecting it from the pull-down menu when you compose a new message.
• You can sign in to your Yahoo! Mail (or anywhere else on Yahoo!) using the extra email address with your existing password.
• You can even make the extra email address the default for sending new mail. Just set it as the default in the ‘Mail Accounts’ section of Mail Options.

I really hope you try out this feature. If you get stuck, or want to find out more information about extra email addresses in Yahoo! Mail, take a look at our help pages.

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Yahoo! web lifestyle editor, Heather Cabot, was a guest on the Martha Stewart show last Friday. You might remember Heather from her appearance on The View from the Bay last year. Martha’s show on social networking and technology featured guests David Pogue from the New York Times and Biz Stone from Twitter. Heather was on to highlight how Yahoo! makes it easy to bring everything that matters to you in one place.

The beginning of Heather’s segment includes a tour of our newly designed Homepage. But I’m probably a little biased in thinking the best part was when Heather and Martha opened up Yahoo! Mail to highlight some of the open and social features that help you to be more productive and stay better connected. I have to agree with Martha that Picnik is a really great Yahoo! Mail App.

Here’s a link to the videos available from the show on Friday. http://www.marthastewart.com/show/the-martha-stewart-show/the-tech-show. Heather’s segment is number 4.

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It didn’t take long did it? You’ve read the reports from yesterday about email account information being posted online and all the stress that goes with worrying about your online safety. Already there are people out there trying to take advantage of the fact that you might be concerned whether or not you were one of the few people affected by the phishing attack. Phishing, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is the act of trying to trick you into revealing your account and login information via a fake email or fake Website.

Here are some tips to help you identify phishing emails:

• Make sure the Web page address doesn’t have any misspellings or extra words (e.g. http://www.yah000.com, http://www.yahoo-members.com, or http://www.yahoo.BadGuyEnterprises.com) in it. When it doubt, go straight to http://www.yahoo.co.uk and log in from there.
• Be vigilant about anything that doesn’t look right on the page, such as typos, outdated content, or broken or missing pictures.
• Best idea: be sure to set up a customized “Sign-In seal” picture — instructions are at https://protect.login.yahoo.com/ – and never enter your password unless you see that picture on the page.

Just this morning we’re getting reports of a particularly well prepared email attempting to make you think that we are contacting you to verify your account information. In fact, this is nothing new. I’ve posted about this before. But this particular version of a phishing email has been very well produced and appears to look very official. So if you have received something like the screenshot below, this is not an email from Yahoo.

This one pictured above is a prime example of a phishing email, which uses a scare tactic to try to solicit you to send your account details and password. The one above is using the news stories from yesterday to lure you into clicking a link (the link in the email actually goes to some website that is not part of Yahoo) and giving your account details. Always be mindful of any Web page that requests your Yahoo! password (or any password for that matter).

So if you receive an email like the one above, don’t fall for it. Just delete it, or better yet, click the “Spam” button. It’s the quickest and easiest way to let us know that it’s spam.

Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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You may have heard or read about email accounts and their passwords being posted online. While I’ve read different versions of how the person(s) responsible was able to get the email account information, it was not a result of any insecurity at Yahoo! It looks to be a result of phishing attacks. Should you feel that one of your email accounts was affected by the recent publication, whether it is a Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail account, I would suggest changing your password as well as other account security information like secret questions and alternate email addresses.

We are aware that a limited number of Yahoo! IDs have been made public, it’s uncertain if any of those email/password combinations have resulted in any accounts being compromised. Online scams and phishing attacks are an ongoing and industry-wide issue and Yahoo! takes great effort to protect our users’ security.

We also have the following online resources that provide information and guidelines on email safety:
Our anti-spam site: http://antispam.yahoo.com/
With a phishing prevention sub-section: http://antispam.yahoo.com/phishing
Our help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/abuse/
And of course, I’ve posted a number of articles about online safety to this blog: Spotting phishing emails, how to spot online scams, avoiding the lottery scams, and account recovery help

Here are a couple FAQs that provide additional information:
Have accounts been compromised because of this?
We are unable to confirm whether accounts have been compromised at this time. However, we strongly suggest that consumers take caution in securing their email and other online accounts by regularly changing their passwords, and updating account security information.

What do I do if I think my account has been compromised?
You should change your password immediately. Also, if you are unable to enter your account, you can take steps to recover it here: https://edit.yahoo.com/forgotroot

We take online security seriously at Yahoo! We strive to make you and your Yahoo! account as safe as possible. Of course if you have any questions or issues with your account, please contact our Customer Care team.

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You may have heard or read about email accounts and their passwords being posted online. While I’ve read different versions of how the person(s) responsible was able to get the email account information, it was not a result of any insecurity at Yahoo! It looks to be a result of phishing attacks. Should you feel that one of your email accounts was affected by the recent publication, whether it is a Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail account, I would suggest changing your password as well as other account security information like secret questions and alternate email addresses.

We are aware that a limited number of Yahoo! IDs have been made public, it’s uncertain if any of those email/password combinations have resulted in any accounts being compromised. Online scams and phishing attacks are an ongoing and industry-wide issue and Yahoo! takes great effort to protect our users’ security.

We also have the following online resources that provide information and guidelines on email safety:
Our anti-spam site: http://uk.antispam.yahoo.com/
With a phishing prevention sub-section: http://uk.antispam.yahoo.com/phishing
Our help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/uk/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/abuse/ (phishing section at the bottom)
And of course, I’ve posted a bunch of articles about online safety to this blog: http://ymailuk.com/2009/05/05/keeping-your-account-safe-we-will-never-ask-for-your-password/
http://ymailuk.com/2009/02/06/top-tips-for-spotting-online-scams/
http://ymailuk.com/2008/05/07/spring-into-safety/

Here are a couple FAQs that provide additional information:
Have accounts been compromised because of this?
We are unable to confirm whether accounts have been compromised at this time. However, we strongly suggest that consumers take caution in securing their email and other online accounts by regularly changing their passwords, and updating account security information.

What do I do if I think my account has been compromised?
You should change your password immediately. Also, if you are unable to enter your account, you can take steps to recover it here: https://edit.yahoo.com/forgotroot

We take online security seriously at Yahoo! We strive to make you and your Yahoo! account as safe as possible. Of course if you have any questions or issues with your account, please contact our Customer Care team.

Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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