Ya who?
November 28, 2019 11:06 AM   Subscribe

Almost every day lately, I get a single message from Yahoo with a sign-in code.

I have not asked for these, and do not need them. The messages are definitely from Yahoo, and the links are all valid Yahoo links. They seem to come from requests from all over the world — the last three were from Ohio, Florida and Brazil. I changed my password the first time, but looking at Recent Activity, nothing seems to be wrong. What's going on? Do I need to worry? Is there something I should be doing beyond good password management (mine is more than 10 characters, with a mix of upper case, lower case, numeric and punctuation)? I have been a victim of several of the recent account break-ins, though no problems have occurred so far.
posted by ubiquity to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Those codes are generated when someone tries to log into your account, so that's probably what's happening. The different locations are probably spoofed. If your password has been changed recently and you have 2-factor authentication set up, I would say that you're safe.

It's annoying, but until you are no longer being targeted you may get these regularly. Whoever is trying this may stop after a while since 2FA is going to stymie their attempts every time. It may be possible to mute them except for when you actually want to log in.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:54 AM on November 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


What do you mean by sign-in codes? Is it a "magic link" that you click to sign in without a password? If so, I wouldn't be too worried.

2FA codes are codes that *you* enter, not codes that Yahoo send you. It's certainly a good idea to turn on 2FA if you don't have it already.
posted by matthewr at 4:23 AM on November 29, 2019


I find Yahoo's sign-in security to be confusing. I generate messages like yours sometimes when I wander to a different area than my Yahoo email, and I'm not at all certain that I end up needing them to get where I want to go.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:49 AM on November 29, 2019


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