How to thwart those annoying Yahoo email hackers

Yesterday's complaint was about Yahoo email hackers, and in particular, how two Yahoo email accounts of mine sent spam out to some of my contacts. I noted in that previous post that a mysterious entry from Israel appeared in the log-in history. That wasn't me, that was the hacker who logged in through a "Yahoo Partner's Application." See a screen shot on the right.

Adding to the mystery was the clean bill of health provided by no fewer than two anti-virus programs and two malware detectors. That plus reading opinions of others has convinced me that the problem isn't with my machine but with Yahoo's email program. There's a vulnerability that Yahoo can't seem to get a grip on.

So Yahoo email users have to take matters into their own hands. The Yahoo help pages suggest frequent password changes and all the usual blather. But a suggestion from Molly in a comment to that prior post provides a tactic that will probably more effectively cut off the hackers access -- disable the "Yahoo Partner's Application" feature. (Thanks Molly!)

To get rid of those uninvited "Yahoo Partners" follow these instructions after logging into your email account:

1. For users of the "New" Yahoo email, roll the cursor over the little thing that looks like a gear in the upper right, and a list appears. Click the one on the bottom that says, "Account Info."

2. If it asks, re-enter your password. (Go ahead, we aren't watching.)

3. Then on the page that appears locate the category "Sign-In and Security."

4. Under that heading find and click "Manage Apps and Website Connections."

5. Once there, if "Yahoo Partner's Application" appears, click "Remove."

6. Click "Sign off" and you're done.

If you're lucky enough to still be using the old Yahoo email, click "options" in the upper right to reveal a list which includes "Mail Options." Click that one. Then on the new page, click "Account Information" which appears in the list on the left. That takes you to the screen where you have to re-enter your password. And that takes you to item #2, above, where the rest is the same.

I was using the old Yahoo mail on the two hacked accounts, but another thing that axehole hacker did was irrevocably upgrade them to the crappy new Yahoo mail. Grrrr.

Comments

[Conor]

Thank you so much for this tip!

[Ken D]

I had the same issue with the "Yahoo Partner's Application". It sent out my contact list information from three Yahoo email accounts. Yahoo did eventually noticed and stopped the emails from going out - but the 'evil doer' continued to access my accounts, and kept trying, even after I followed all Yahoo's online suggestions (change password, change questions answers, etc.)
I did your suggested fix. I hope it works!
What pisses me off is I called Yahoo - it took a solid day for them to answer their number due to 'high call volume'- and they simply said 'you've been hacked , we can't help you.'
And interestingly: Search Yahoo for "Yahoo Partner's Application" and nothing comes up; search Google and you get plenty of people with plenty of problems.
Seems they are actively suppressing the this problems existence. Yahoo and me ARE DONE 9as soon as I can change things)!

[Geo]

Ken, it worked for me. I haven't had any problems since I removed the Yahoo Partner Application.

It's really disappointing that Yahoo doesn't try a little harder to help its email users. And they're probably feeding all of our emails to the NSA!

If you find a better email service please let us know.