There's a phishing scam doing the rounds, especially on Yahoo!, that sends you a very official-looking email that says your account needs to be verified and will be deleted unless you verify it. It asks you to reply with your username, password, physical address, etc.
Rule number one and only: NO mail provider asks for your password. Not if it is a legitimate service provider. Yahoo!, Rediffmail, Gmail or other mail providers will never ask for your password.
I forwarded the one I got to the anti-phishing section of Yahoo! Customer Care (phishing@cc.yahoo-inc.com) and received a reply, a snippet of which I quote below:
"Any unsolicited message asking for your Yahoo! ID and
password, security key, or other sensitive information is part of a scam to gain unauthorized access to your account."
So never give out your password, no matter how official the mail demanding it looks, even if it appears to come from your mail service provider. Check with your provider using the Help button and searching for "phishing", which is what this kind of scam is called.
I don't like the approach that many companies have when it comes to email and other portals. For one, I don't think anyone in a company should be able to request a search for the information of persons they know. That should be restricted and require approval from the owner of the information.
ReplyDeleteI mean, the other day I paid a bill on an account that I share with someone and I couldn't make any other adjustments to the account because I hadn't put myself on it. That account, by the way, had nothing really to protect, as far as I am concerned, yet the company took steps to ensure the privacy of their registered account holders.
Companies have to be more responsible with protecting the information of users.