Just this morning, a high school classmate forwarded to our user group an email supposedly from Yahoo, asking anyone who receives it to send in their account information.

It sure had me fooled for a while. If you look at all the elements of the email, it looks like a legit email from Yahoo. One thing you have to remember though when receiving supposed “system generated emails”, is that these people have the capability to filter accounts that haven’t been opened for a long time. Why the need for an email like this?

The following information were almost believable:

• The from address- Whoever made this account must have gone great lengths to register that email name, as the exclamation point (!) isn’t allowed in the first name field of Yahoo mail.
• The sender’s email address- “mailcenter_customers@yahoo.com” is one hell of a sender email address, that it almost passes as a believable one.
• Trust elements- The “Yahoo Customer Care”, “Case number”, and “Property fields” are a nice touch.

There were a few things however that made me raise a red flag:

1. Since the email is supposed to be system generated, seeing a “Dear Valued Member” greeting did not make sense at all. All correspondence I get from Yahoo usually includes my name in the first line.
2. System generated emails usually have “don’t reply to this email” messaging. This email lacked this messaging that is standard of all emails like this.
3. The email didn’t have a set deadline on when the information requested should be sent in.
4. Last but not the least, the nature of the information being requested is too sensitive. Even the closest people to me don’t know my username and password.

Before you give in to emails like this, one thing you can do is check with your friends if they’ve received a similar email from Yahoo mail. If they haven’t, then chances are the email is bogus. In times like this when identity theft or password phishing online is normal, it would be a good time to be cautious and educate yourselves with what can be done.

Yahoo has their own security page here. Might be a good idea to check it out.