Locked account for reporting spam?

[emanmb]

Most of my spam reports go out from my free yahoo address. I send them all to SC, knujon, uce.gov, and phishing-reportATus-cert.gov in one FWD using my browser and not an email client. I use the alt-shift-F method to fwd spams in Yahoo.

Today I browse back to my yahoo page and I'm signed out. I try to sign back in but can't. Go thru the "I can't remember my PW" routine and reset my PW.

Once back into my yahoo acct, I see there are a bunch of mailer-daemon emails, one each from SC, uce.gov, and knujon, and another one from yahoo saying:

Dear ,

At Yahoo!, your account safety is our top priority.

Recently, we have detected some unusual activity on your account and as a result, we've temporarily locked it for your protection. You may unlock your account immediately by logging in on a PC. If you have additional questions, please visit us at http://io.help.yahoo.com/contact/index?y=P...care#voice-form to get the help you need.

Sincerely,

Your Yahoo! Customer Experience Team

Now I guess that Yahoo can see that suspicious emails/spam are being fwd'ed from my acct, but isn't checking WHERE those emails are going, i.e. well know spam reporting agency addresses. Would this cause them to lock my account?

Now I have started using HotSpot Shield which shows me as being in the US and I turn that on and off as needed. I can't send email from my Yahoo when using HSS so that I turn it off then for sure. Just thought I should mention that in case it's a red flag to Yahoo and might help solve this.

Thanks

e

[turetzsr]

Hi, emanmb,

...Either or your theories could be correct but you'd have to ask Yahoo (good luck getting a knowledgeable person!). If you search through the SpamCop Forums, you'll see many and varied complaints about reporting to SpamCop from a Yahoo account, including (although none recently that I can remember seeing) the ludicrous refusal by Yahoo to send some spam reports to SpamCop on the grounds that the Yahoo user is attempting to send spam (in other words, they'll block you from sending spam but do nothing to stop it from getting to your Yahoo Inbox -- a problem since fixed by the long-ago introduction of Yahoo's own algorithms that direct suspected spam to a different folder), which is similar to your first theory. I stopped trying to forward spam I receive in my Yahoo account long ago.

[emanmb]

Thanks turetzer.

I was a little unsettling at the time as it seemed as if I was "hacked". Coming back to your email page and finding your login doesn't work sets off alarms. Then I see the emails from Yahoo and mailer daemon once I got back in and realized what was happening.

Yahoo has popped up catchas at times when fwd'ing and a couple spams wouldn't send no matter what I did because of some error, and a few times sending to all 4 reporting addresses wasn't possible so I had to fwd the spam twice sending to only 2 addresses at a time.

I use my Yahoo acct for a lot of stuff but the new layout they made doesn't always work. I like it but it needs some tweaking. It get's a fair amount of spam but being diverted to another folder as in gmail keeps things tidy. I don't like gmail's layout and esp don't like hotmail so Yahoo handles most of my 'stuff'.

e

[turetzsr]

Thanks turetzer.

...You're most welcome! Actually, I prefer SteveT (and it saves your fingers a bit over "turetzsr" or "turetzer") <g>.

<snip>

I don't like gmail's layout and esp don't like hotmail so Yahoo handles most of my 'stuff'.

...Same here! I assume that's because Yahoo!Mail was my first webmail account so I became used to the "Yahoo!Mail" way of doing webmail, even with the several changes they've made over the years....