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

We are excited to announce that the latest version of Yahoo! Mail will roll out of beta testing and be available for all 284-million users worldwide in the coming weeks. This latest version of Yahoo! Mail is faster, safer, easier to use, and offers a seamless experience across PC, mobile and tablet devices.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

Social Infusion: Instantly respond to messages from Facebook, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Mail and other webmail providers with a new easy reply bar. View photo slideshows, inline videos and more from within your inbox. Plus, you can view and share notifications and updates from Twitter, Facebook and Zynga from within a new Updates tab.

Conversations Aren’t Just Email: Yahoo! Mail prioritizes messages and contacts that matter most. When you want to compose an IM, SMS or email you will find your most frequent contacts and lists surfaced first . Also, chat with Facebook friends alongside Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger contacts and view all of your past IM and text conversations within Yahoo! Mail.

Tailor Your Inbox: Choose from over 50 vibrant themes and stationery options to express your personality and customize how you view messages and contacts.

App-ify Mail: New, easy-to-use applications help you be more productive and organized right from your inbox. Now you can track your online orders with the All My Purchases app, stop receiving unwanted newsletters using the Unsubscriber app, and send mega files using Attach Large Files by YouSendIt.

Mail Search Redefined: Our mail search experience leverages Yahoo!’s wealth of search science and technology to help you quickly find the emails you are looking for. Easily sort and narrow search results by sender, attachment file, date, or folder location using the refinement column tools on the left-hand side.

Lightning Speed: Leveraging Yahoo!’s cloud technology, Yahoo! Mail provides performance that is 2x faster than the previous versions of Yahoo! Mail, even in regions where only basic internet speeds are offered.

Spam Buster: Advanced SpamGuard technology and a new anti-phishing platform have reduced spam reports by 60 percent and help protect users from email hackers and unwanted instant message conversations. Yahoo! Mail blocks over 550 billion spam messages per month.

To upgrade an existing Yahoo! Mail account or create a new Yahoo! Mail account go to overview.mail.yahoo.com and click on the ‘Upgrade Now’ button.

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“Phishers” keep us up at night. These people deliberately try to con you and then steal your private information. This is a huge industry-wide problem, and Yahoo! dedicates significant resources to identify and block phishing emails before they reach your inbox.

Unfortunately, we can’t stop phishers without your help. The most effective way to prevent phishers from stealing your information is to remember a handful of common sense tips that can help stop intruders in their tracks and keep you safe online:

1. Don’t recycle your password
Got a favorite password you like to use? Well, don’t use it often because attackers that successfully obtain a password you use at one Website will likely try to use it to access your other accounts, such as your bank or favorite online retailer. Here’s a better idea: Use a different password for each Website you use to access sensitive information (i.e: email, bank, social networking, and major retail Website passwords).  Mix-up your passwords even if your username is the same.

2. Never send your sensitive information over email
No reputable businesses will ask you to send them your password or account information in an email. If you receive such a message, immediately click the “Spam” button on that message and we’ll get rid of it. Likewise, beware of messages from major companies asking you to “click this link” to verify your password. Instead of clicking on the link, visit that company’s homepage or call the company’s customer service line to verify the authenticity of that email. Phishers like to use these types of emails to direct people to legitimate-looking Websites that are really meant to steal IDs and passwords.

3. Check the “From” line
If you get an email message that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Always look at the email address itself and not only at the name of the sender.  If the “From” line seems too generic or the domain does not clearly identify who the sender is, such as “yourbank@freemmail.com”, or “servicealerts@mail-boxes.us”, then it’s likely a hoax. Be safe, not sorry.

4. Know thy friend
The other day a friend of mine sent me an email with a generic, “Hey, check this out!” in the subject line and a link from an unknown Website. Turned out his account had been compromised. Be suspicious if a friend sends you a link that seems phishy – and make sure to alert them so they can warn other recipients of the message and alert their email service provider. If they ask you to send money, give them a call first (even if the email says it’s pointless). Scammers steal accounts and send messages with sad stories to convince you to wire them money. We all want to help our friends, but not by sending money to strangers.

5. Keep your system virus-free
There are viruses out there that steal your passwords by recording your keystrokes. Using and regularly updating virus scanning software is a good way to protect yourself from these and other types of malicious code. There are a number of anti-virus companies that offer free versions or trial offers, including: http://security.symantec.com , http://usa.kaspersky.com/downloads/free-virus-scanner.php, http://us.mcafee.com/root/downloads.asp?id=freeTrials, and http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html.

You’ll continue to see more tips from Yahoo! about how to protect yourself online. We’re committed to arming you with tools that will help keep you safe, including the improved spam protection we’ve built into the new Yahoo! Mail Beta. Take a test drive or learn more about it here .

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At Yahoo! Mail, we take security very seriously, so we want to keep you informed about potential threats that we’re seeing on the horizon. In recent weeks, a new technology has raised awareness around security weaknesses that threaten Web surfers around the world.  The technology at the center of attention is called Firesheep. It’s a plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that lets users view the Web traffic of others logged onto the same unsecure Wi-Fi network and possibly steal log-in information. While the implications of this technology are serious, there are a few key tips to help prevent anyone from accessing your information:

• Always be cautious when accessing your account when using unsecure Wi-Fi networks. Consider accessing your account only on networks that use WPA-enabled, secure Wi-Fi connections. And, you should only connect to Websites that use cookie-based authentication.
• Sign up for a personal VPN service and use it when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network. If you’re using a work computer that has VPN software, activate it.

If you want more information about how to stay safe online, visit http://security.yahoo.com/. As always, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

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At Yahoo! Mail, we take security very seriously, so we want to keep you informed about potential threats that we’re seeing on the horizon. In recent weeks, a new technology has raised awareness around security weaknesses that threaten Web surfers around the world. The technology at the center of attention is called Firesheep. It’s a plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that lets users view the Web traffic of others logged onto the same unsecure Wi-Fi network and possibly steal log-in information. While the implications of this technology are serious, there are a few key tips to help prevent anyone from accessing your information:

• Always be cautious when accessing your account when using unsecure Wi-Fi networks. Consider accessing your account only on networks that use WPA-enabled, secure Wi-Fi connections. And, you should only connect to Websites that use cookie-based authentication.
• If you need to use public a Wi-Fi connection, use a POP email client to access your mail via SSL. Yahoo! Mail UK users have the ability to send and receive email using clients like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others. Make sure to set up your client with SSL for the best account security.
• Sign up for a personal VPN service and use it when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network. If you’re using a work computer that has VPN software, activate it.

If you want more information about how to stay safe online, visit http://security.yahoo.com. As always, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

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Since we launched Yahoo! Mail Beta a week ago, I’ve been reading your feedback. I’m thrilled to hear your passion for the new product. Your comments have helped us identify what we need to fix in the short-term and how we should evolve Yahoo! Mail in the long-term. On behalf of the Yahoo! Mail team, thank you.

I’d also like to answer some of the most common questions and concerns about Yahoo! Mail Beta. From reading comments on the Yahoo! Mail Blog, on Facebook, Twitter, and the suggestion board, there are a few consistent things on your mind:

• Unread message count: We released an update to Yahoo! Mail Beta that addressed this issue. From now on, the unread message count will not include unread messages in the Trash and Spam folders.

• Browsers: Yahoo! Mail Beta works best with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and newer, Safari 4 and newer, and Chrome 5. But, we’re no longer going to block Chrome 6 or Internet Explorer 9 users from accessing Yahoo! Mail Beta. And, we’ll continue to support more and more browsers as we approach general availability.

• Link to Calendar: We’re glad to hear from our Calendar users! We’ll be adding a link to Calendar in short order.

• Colors & themes: What, you don’t love purple? Not to worry, we have an assortment of great color options and themes coming soon. We’ll be sure to tell you all about them on this blog when they launch.

• Header: It sounds like some of you would like more room to read and compose messages. There are changes to the interface coming over the next few months that will give you more options. Stay tuned.

• IMAP: We support IMAP on many popular mobile devices. Today, our focus is to support the tremendous growth of our mobile IMAP users.

Keep sending us your comments and suggestions. We need your help to make Yahoo! Mail even better.

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If you follow our blog, you’ve heard about Yahoo! Mail Beta and seen a sneak peak of the new product. Today, you will get the chance to try it yourself. I’m pleased to announce the release of Yahoo! Mail Beta, which delivers a faster, safer and more social email experience. Let me give you a tour of what’s new in the product.

Speed thrills
A faster email experience is at the core of Yahoo! Mail Beta. We built the product from the ground up to be fast so you can be more productive. In fact, Yahoo! Mail Beta is more than two-times faster than previous versions of Yahoo! Mail. You can learn more about how we enhanced the performance of Yahoo! Mail Beta at the YDN Blog.

Be gone, spammer!
Spam can be distracting, irritating and downright dangerous. We block more than 130 billion spam messages every month to deliver you a safer place to email. And, our focus on battling spam has earned us the highest marks among our competitors, as noted in a 2010 study by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute.

Yahoo! Mail everywhere
If you use Yahoo! Mail on the iPhone, iPad or an Android device, the look and feel of Yahoo! Mail Beta will be familiar. We designed Yahoo! Mail Beta to be sleek, elegant and consistent across devices.

Beyond email
There are many ways to connect with the people that matter to you. That’s why we invited Twitter into our social stream. Now you can read your friends’ tweets, retweet or compose your own 140-character message alongside Facebook posts and Yahoo! status updates all from the What’s New page. In addition, we made our IM and SMS features more productive because you can organize your conversations in separate tabs, switch between text and chat conversations and dock the conversation window when you are multi-tasking.

Photos and videos
Email is a great place to share private photos and videos with friends and family. Now you can browse rich slideshows from Flickr or Picasa links and watch video clips from Flickr and YouTube right from your email.

Find stuff faster
We’re using Yahoo!’s wealth of search science and technology to make email search faster. A new left-hand column helps you navigate, sort and narrow your search results by sender, attachment file, date or folder location.

We’re just getting started
As you can imagine, we have big plans for Yahoo! Mail Beta. Our engineers designed Yahoo! Mail Beta in a way that lets us make changes fast, so stay tuned as we release new enhancements over the coming months.

Now it’s your turn to try Yahoo! Mail Beta. You can switch back to your original Yahoo! Mail any time. And, please note that Yahoo! Mail Beta will not be immediately available for Yahoo! Small Business users or users on some older browsers and operating systems.

We want to know all about your experience and we hope you will tell us what you think by leaving us a comment. Check back to the Yahoo! Mail Blog for more updates.

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