# Rampant Yahoo email hack-age?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 2, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916 "2010-08-02T19:02:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/1 "2010-08-02T19:02:19Z")

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In the past 3 days I’ve gotten at least 4 different spam messages (mostly to mailing lists but one directly, just now), from people known to me. Some more traditional spam and some “I’ve been mugged in England” scams.

Anyone else noticing this? Is there some widespread hacking of Yahoo in particular going on?

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**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/2 "2010-08-03T18:35:46Z")

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Using my one bump - another friend was hacked today (they set up an autoreply on her account that directed people to a malware site).

There does seem to be a lot of it but I haven’t found anything via Google yet. I’m wondering if Yahoo’s servers were hacked and they’re trying to keep it quiet?

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**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/3 "2010-08-03T18:40:36Z")

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Not sure about Yahoo, but my Gmail address just popped up a warning that my account was being accessed in New Jersey, so I immediately changed the password. Thank you, Gmail.

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**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/4 "2010-08-03T19:07:31Z")

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Someone spoofed (?) my hotmail address last week–I got a bunch of auto-replies to a spam “My Pharmacy” message. I wonder if the rash of activity has anything to do with the DefCon gathering last week.

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**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/5 "2010-08-03T19:19:48Z")

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You may see an increase in spam if your email address was on Facebook, be it your account or a friend’s. Facebook was data mined of all public information and the data offered as a torrent download. [Facebook Data Torrent](http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100729/tc_pcworld/thefacebookdatatorrentdebacleqa)

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**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rampant-yahoo-email-hack-age/548916/6 "2010-08-03T19:40:53Z")

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> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> “I’ve been mugged in England” scams.

This is a common one amongst networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, which tend to make it easy for scammers to find identifying info for friends of accounts that have been hijacked.