March 30, 2007 on 9:28 am | In News | 17 Comments
On April 1st, friends may play practical jokes on you, and although amusing and sometimes annoying, they’re usually harmless. Unfortunately, not all hoaxes are in good fun. Every day is April Fools’ Day to online scammers and phishing over IM is one of their favorite jokes to play.
Phishing is a play on the word “fishing,” because the fraudster is fishing for private account information. Phishers are basically tech savvy cons who try to trick people into sharing personal information like financial data, credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers.
Email is still the main playground for phishers, but in the last couple of years they’ve been after instant messaging users, too. A typical phishing experience in IM goes like this: A new IM window appears on your screen, usually from someone you already know. It dispenses with the typical hello greeting and usually says something generic like “Check this out:” followed by a link. Although the IM appears to come from a friend, it’s actually from the phisher who after acquiring your friend’s account info, signed in and started IM’ing all of their buddies, including you.
Clicking links in these kinds of IMs take you to a fraudulent website that looks identical to a well-known site that you may already use (your bank, a credit card company, Yahoo!, eBay or PayPal). Typically the website will ask you to sign in or request other personal information like social security number, credit card numbers etc. If you enter and submit this information, the phisher has the key to the kingdom.
The FBI recently reported on a new form of phishing that utilizes Voice-over-IP (VOIP) services. “Vishing” is like traditional phishing except that your personal information is stolen over a voice call rather than on a Website. Typically you’ll get an email directing you to call a customer service line. When you call in, the phony automated system prompts you to enter personal information which is captured by the phisher
And though not directly related to IM security, there’s a growing trend of phishing scams taking place over bogus WiFi networks. Phishers set up unsecured wireless access points with network names that sound legitimate like “Mobile HotSpot”. This attracts unsuspecting laptop users seeking free internet access. Once connected to the WiFi network, the phisher can monitor a user’s web traffic, grabbing logins, passwords and other personal information from online accounts. Just last night I looked up wireless networks from my home and found an unsecured network called “Free Internet Access”. Hmm, very suspicious. Nothing’s really free, right?
So how do you avoid these phishing scams and if you do fall for one, what should you do? If you receive an IM from anyone that looks odd or suspicious, do not reply or click on any links (even if it looks legitimate). Click the “Ignore” button in the IM window and when asked, report it as spam. This will prevent that ID from sending you future messages and will send a spam report to the network. If you have to ignore a friend that’s on your list, you can always remove them from your ignore list later when they’re not being phished anymore. Just go to Messenger > Preferences > Ignore List.
If you do fall victim to a phishing scam and accidentally provide personal information on a phony website such as a login and password, the first thing to do is open a new browser and manually enter the site’s real address and change your account information. Doing this allows you to lock the phisher out before they have a chance to change your passwords and go to town with your account information. If the phishing scam was related to financial services, contact your financial institution immediately.
If you’ve received a suspicious communication in Yahoo! Messenger or Mail, inform the organization that is being impersonated by forwarding them the email (preferably as an attachment; this preserves full headers). And if you do receive a phishing communication in which Yahoo! is being impersonated, please forward the email or IM contents to phishing@cc.yahoo-inc.com.
For more information on identifying and avoiding phishing scams, visit the Yahoo! Security Center.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 28, 2007 on 1:39 pm | In News | 36 Comments
Another Hack Day took place this week here at Yahoo!. Messenger engineers Ryan Doherty and Jonathan New decided to make a hack for our very own blog. They developed a WordPress plug-in that makes it possible to use all the Yahoo! Messenger emoticons on our blog (even the hidden ones). Thanks Ryan and Jon! 
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 27, 2007 on 4:50 pm | In News | 13 Comments
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably have friends that share videos with you from YouTube, Yahoo! Video or Google Video. It’s fun to look at videos but wouldn’t it be better to view them with the friend that shared it with you? Yahoo! Research Berkeley must think so too, because their new Zync plug-in allows you and a friend to watch the same video in sync in the IM window.
Once you and a friend load the Zync plug-in during your IM conversation, you can control video playback with a few basic commands. To play a video from YouTube, Yahoo! Video or Google Video, grab the URL (http://…) from the website and type “watch [video URL]” into your IM text box and send it (ex: watch http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=329037). The video will load and begin playing in the adjoining panel.
The best part about Zync is that when the video is playing, you and your friend see the exact same thing at the same time. This makes it much easier to talk about the video, either over IM or during a voice call. Each of you can control playback through the icons below the video window or by IM’ing text commands like “pause”, “rewind”, and “back” which when followed by a number, will backup as many seconds (ex: “back 10” will take you back 10 seconds in the video). Handy as these text commands are, they can result in a fast-fingered duel for control. So if you’re the one who usually hogs the remote, be prepared to share.
Yahoo! Research Berkeley also created a handy Zync launcher button that allows visitors to your site to click and share a video you posted using the Zync plug-in. If you have a blog or website and frequently embed videos, you can drop some code in below the video window that displays a “Share with Yahoo! Messenger” link.
When clicked, the Zync button launches the plug-in, asks the user which Messenger friend they want to watch the video with and then opens the IM window with the video playing. Most video services only offer you the chance to email a video or grab its URL, but with the Zync launcher, your visitor can jump right into an IM conversation to share the video.
Yahoo! Research Berkeley’s mission is to explore and invent social media and mobile media technology and applications that will enable people to create, describe, share, find and remix media on the web. Head over to the Yahoo! Research Berkeley website to see what else they’re up to.
After you’ve tried the Zync plug-in, leave a comment here on our blog to let us know what you think.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 23, 2007 on 1:41 pm | In News | 25 Comments
I know many of us don’t like help pages on websites because sometimes you can’t find what you’re looking for. Just yesterday, “jon” left a blog comment saying “…i wish messenger didn’t default to giving your entire first and last name to your contact”. I started responding to jon’s comment to let him know how to fix that, and wanted to include a link to a relevant help page.
So I went to Yahoo! Messenger Help for version 8 and was surprised to see a search box. We used to have one but Greg, our customer care zealot, was so appalled by the poor search results that he ripped it out several months ago. But now it was back so perhaps Greg had found a better solution…
I dove right in and entered “full name” into the search box, hoping to find a help article for jon. The search was fast and below the results for help articles were more results for matching questions and answers from the Messenger category on Yahoo! Answers. I found a good link to include in my comment back to jon about how to modify your Messenger contact details so that your full name is not displayed or passed onto friends that add you.
I immediately IM’d Greg and an intellectual exchange took place (gotta love IM archive):
Sarah B: Dude, new search in Help??
Greg C.: wow, i just pushed it like a second ago
Sarah B.: Is that a new search engine in help?
Greg C.: u r good!!!!
Sarah B.: It rocks!!!
So, if you’ve been skeptical about using Yahoo! Messenger Help, give it another try. With a single search you can get results for articles in Help as well as Yahoo! Answers. It just launched, so Greg is still in the process of optimizing it, but the more you use it, the better it can become. Please bang away on it and let us know how it worked for you by leaving a comment here on the blog.
Yahoo! Messenger 8 help: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/messenger/messenger8/index.html
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 21, 2007 on 3:43 pm | In News | 36 Comments
Some of my friends hesitate to try instant messaging. The most common reasons I hear are, “IM is just for teens” and “I don’t want to be interrupted all day long.”
Well, this post is in honor of my IM-phobic friends. I assure them that I love IM (and that I long ago stopped checking the age 13-19 box), and that Yahoo! Messenger’s handy stealth settings and other privacy controls allow them to control who they talk to and when.
The most extreme form of privacy in Yahoo! Messenger is making yourself “invisible.” You can do this right when you sign in by clicking the “Sign in as Invisible” box. Or you can change your status to “Invisible to Everyone” after you’re online. This immediately changes your appearance to “offline” in other friends’ contact lists, so they think you’re unavailable. Your contact list will also change to italics so you have a visual reminder of your invisible status.
Friends can still IM you when you’re invisible, but you can safely ignore the messages without feeling guilty. You can also IM anyone when you’re invisible, but keep in mind this will blow your cover! Whenever I do this, I inevitably get the reply, “Why are you hiding from me?”
Even when you are in invisible mode, you can still appear available to select friends. For example, when I sign on from home in the evening, I don’t want to be available to my coworkers (shocking, right?
). So I sign in as invisible and then set my status as available to only the Friends group in my contact list. Friends see me online but my colleagues don’t. To do that, I right-click the group name, choose “Stealth Settings” and select “Appear Online to Selected Contacts.” You can use this same technique to appear online to individual contacts as well. The friends you chose to be online for will also see you as available on their lists, and their names on yours will no longer be in italics.
If you have contacts that you always want to appear offline to, just right-click on a contact (or group), choose “Stealth Settings, then select “Appear Permanently Offline.” This setting is preserved even when you sign off and sign back in.
Status messages are another way to let friends know when you’re busy and don’t want to be disturbed. You can create a custom status message (“Pulling my hair out” or “Don’t bug me!”) and choose the “Busy” icon to display with it. This lets you still be online but tells friends that you’d rather not be contacted and why. Of course friends don’t always obey your status wishes, but there’s only so much advice I can give.
And last, if an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend just won’t leave you alone, there’s always the “Ignore” button in the IM window, which will prevent further messages from being delivered. If the breakup doesn’t stick and you want the person back in your (IM) life, you can always take the person off your Ignore list (Messenger menu > Preferences > Ignore List). The Ignore list preference also has a setting that will block IMs from anyone who is not on your Messenger list.
So to all my IM-phobic friends, I hope the above solutions will entice you to join the wonderful world of IM. See you online!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
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