I read in the Herald Tribune on June 15-16 that Yahoo is fighting requests by the US government to spy on users. This is supposedly because the put their “users first.” The article quotes a ruling in 2008, where Yahoo “argued that the [government] order violated its users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
It is of course important for companies to protect the privacy of their users, but Yahoo seems to also protect the criminals, in the case of criminal activity. They don’t provide a method for users to counter hacking by providing copies of communications to the account owner. They don’t keep a copy of forwarded email to enable an account owner to view any communications between a hacker and people on the contact list.
My email account at Georgia Tech can be forwarded to another account, but Georgia Tech keeps a copy of all forwarded email in my account. Yahoo allows a criminal hacker to delete any trace of forwarded email.
My yahoo email was hacked in May. The hacker has an email oriakuokafo@gmail.com and forwarded all of my email to an account that he/she created: lmilor@live.com. The hacker also deleted my contact list, and yahoo keeps no copy of forwarded email in my account.
The hacker wrote the following.
“Subject: HELP………………..Linda Milor
Hello,
I really hope you get this on time. I and my family came over to Manila Philippines for a short vacation trip, but unfortunately we were robbed at the park of the hotel where we stayed along with other folks. All cash,credit card and including cell phones were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have out passports safe with us and the hotel telephone lines were disconnected during the incident. So I have access to emails only. Please I’m going to need some sort of loan from you for me to relocate to another hotel close to the embassy and also to get another flight ticket. Those thieves made away with my credit card as well which is why this can’t be resolved instantly.
I have been to the Police and they directed me to the embassy but they’re not helping issues at all and my flight leaves tomorrow…Wondering if you can loan me $2,450 USD,i will make the refund when i get home.Please Let me know if you can help me out?
With Regards”
The poor English enabled my friends to understand that I did not write this. I heard about this letter through some friends that called me. I changed my password, and tried to contact Yahoo.
It is very hard to contact Yahoo, even if criminal activity is involved. I filled out a form and was given a phone number to call and incident number. I called the number and was told that Yahoo only has phone service for small businesses. If you have a problem with email, which is a free service, then there is no support. Hence, Yahoo was not willing to help me to cut off communication between the on-line criminal and any of my contacts. Since it is a “free” service, then criminals can do whatever they want with it, according to the Yahoo representative. Actually, it is not a free service, since I pay $10 per year.
After further searching on the web, I filled out another online form, this time mentioning the fact that I will be publishing this incident online. I was given another incident number and phone number to call. After waiting on hold for a long time, I requested two things: (a) restoration of my contact list and (b) copies of my emails that were forwarded to the criminal using lmilor@live.com. Yahoo was able to restore the contact list. But, the representative told me that Yahoo could only restore email through an online request. The technical support agent helped me fill out the online form. There was no option to restore forwarded email, and therefore she suggested that I request to restore previously deleted emails from the last seven days. I mentioned that this did not make sense, since by this time, the hacking incident had happened about two weeks before. Moreover, I wanted to read the forwarded emails, not emails that I had deleted.
This request did not produce the emails that were sent to the criminal that I had requested. It just deleted the emails that I had received within the seven days before the request was made!
An email was received, saying that the request to restore a previous version of the mailbox was executed and “**Please do not reply to this email, as no one will receive your message.**” Then, shortly after that I received another email from yahoo saying “We have not heard from you concerning your request for support in the 72 hours since we sent you a response. Consequently, we have changed the status of your question to SOLVED.” How can something be solved, if there is no way to report the fact that it is not solved?
Yahoo needs to find a better way to support their customers, and not just facilitate online crime, in the name of protecting privacy.