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Abuse at Yahoo

Abuse Reporting at Yahoo.com (abuse@yahoo.com)


It is essential to be able to report abuse at an ISP such as Yahoo. This goes further than dealing with spam. It's got to be possible to squeal on scamsters and have their sender email accounts closed-down, and to have their drop-boxes closed down. Note that closing the drop-box is more important!

What scamsters do, when they are sending those ridiculous 419 Advance Fee Fraud scams, is they set up a disposable e-mail account somewhere, say AOL. Then they set up another quite distinct e-mail account, say at Yahoo. That is known as the "drop-box".

Now here's the problem: ISPs have a silly idea that spam is the important issue. Maybe they are scared they are going to suffer legal trouble?! Anyway, there are more important crimes than spam. Closing down the sender account in a scam e-mail is a small detail. It's much more important to close down the drop-box. The drop-box receives e-mail but doesn't send any. However, it is a much bigger menace to the public welfare.

What used to be possible was to report abuse to the ISP. You could send an abuse report to abuse@yahoo.com , but that's now gone! Instead you're expected to fill a form. This is less convenient, however, I have now been told the location of it. So, for your information, here it is. You can find it at...

http://help.yahoo.com/l/ph/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/abuse/abuse-01.html

This should work. Note that the "Yahoo ID" field is optional, and you don't need a Yahoo account to report abuse. You just need to copy the abuse message and the message headers and do a "CAPCHA".

Another method for reporting abuse at Yahoo is a bit involved, but is as follows...

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/ - (opens in new window)

and then click on "Report Abuse".

Then click on "I am being threatened or harassed by a Yahoo! user".

Then click on Yahoo Mail.

In the dropdown box for "select a product", select "Mail".

In the dropdown box for "select a version", select "Mail".

In the dropdown box for "select a category", select "Abuse and Spam".

In the dropdown box for "select a sub-category", select "received threats or harrassment" (even if that's not the case).

In "write a short description", type in a brief line summarising the problem.

Then press the box next to it to "Enter".

Then click on "Email Now" which appears.

Make sure the CAPCHA appears. If it doesn't, press refresh on your browser.

You can now type in your actual complaint, and the abuser's Yahoo ID or e-mail account (the drop-box).

You'll have to copy&paste the e-mail contents and headers.

Put your own info in so Yahoo can contact you. If some of the fields are inappropriate, put "not_applicable".

Then put in the CAPCHA code, and press Send.

I am hoping this will help to knock-down the number of criminal accounts at Yahoo.com.hk (Hong Kong) which are the drop-boxes for crooks in West Africa. Also Yahoo.co.kr (Korea).

Previously it has been difficult to report abuse at Yahoo, because of absurd assumptions such as the problem that you are supposed to have a Yahoo ID or a Yahoo account. Ridiculous! You might have a Yahoo account or you might not. It's nothing to do with it. You need to be able to report a crime in a neighbourhood even if you are just visiting.

Drop-boxes are set up at the most vulnerable ISPs. Anywhere you can't report abuse becomes where the scamsters gravitate to. Yet's not let Yahoo become the new rogue honeypot!

Well Done to Yahoo for having a proper abuse-reporting system!

In fact I set this page up just after a successful abuse report on 2011/10/26 and then found several others which needed to be reported.

On 2012/04/23 following the Hyundai Boss Scam, I had to rewrite this page, with some help from those friendly people at Yahoo London, as the stuff had all changed again.