Hmm...This is an interesting article about Yahoo! and their new way of sending out subscription reminders.
To renew a subscription to Yahoo Mail Plus, Yahoo sends its subscribers a billing e-mail from a cryptic domain, cc.yahoo-inc.com, with absolutely no prior warning. The e-mail of course asks you to verify personal information and supply your credit card number--an Internet taboo if there ever was one.Yikes! Apparently, this guy's wife is not as safety conscious (or internet savvy) as most of us: "[M]y wife input her information and clicked 'send,' she had a bad feeling and asked me to investigate." Here's the thing that sparked my interest in the story. The story at first seems like a stern poke at Yahoo! for doing such a taboo thing as put a form in an email asking for information. But, the story is very malicious. The author does not include any thing that shows just what the email looks like. From what he wrote, it sounds as if the email is a form that is filled out from within an email client -- classic phishing. When I read up on emails at work, I found out that the email contains a link to a SSL page on yahoo.com. The email may ask you to verify information and supply credit card numbers, but it does not blatantly do so. It asks you to visit Yahoo! Billing to verify information and credit card numbers. This is something that the author does not feel is important to include in his sensational article. CNet used to be a reputable place to get news, but it seems that they are on a Yahoo! bashing spree now. Lets not forget the other idiot reporter from CNet who wrote about the whole Yahoo! and Chinese government piece. I can understand why CNet would want to run stuff like this, it gets people talking and clicking over to their site. But, you run enough of these anti-Yahoo! stories and you'll end up alienating people and looking like some kind of Google-fanboy (ever wonder why Google forgave CNet so quickly??). Jon Oltsik, the author of this article now joins his editor buddy Charles Cooper as another "idiot reporter". Get the facts straight guys, stop with the sensationalism. And Jon, teach your wife some internet savviness -- she's probably the kind of computer user that clicks on anything inside of an email, installs anything that pops up a window, and fills out any form asking for information. Don't be mad at Yahoo! that your wife is one of those stupid internet users, be mad at your wife.