Yahoo! Mail Leads the Industry in Protection from Online Identity Theft through E-mail

Business Wire, Nov 15, 2004

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Worldwide Availability of Advanced Search Capabilities, Significant Storage Increase, and Enhanced Address Book Tools in Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced a suite of powerful enhancements to the award-winning Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com) service. In its commitment to provide a safe e-mail experience, Yahoo! Mail has implemented DomainKeys (TM) -- a leading technological solution that validates the true origin of e-mail messages -- to bolster protection against online identity theft through e-mail. Through a form of identity theft called "phishing," spammers try to disguise their identity and send out forged e-mail messages in an effort to gain access to consumers' personal information. With DomainKeys in place, consumers will receive increased protection from spammers who use e-mail forgery, also known as "spoofing," to steal valuable information. Yahoo! Mail is also making available today several new enhancements worldwide, including advanced search capabilities, free storage increase to 250 megabytes, and easier address book transfer and address notification tools.

With an increase in storage, consumers around the world can store their attachments, important messages, or information they want to easily access from anywhere from their Web-based accounts. All users will benefit from enhanced search capabilities with the ability to easily and quickly sort, search and retrieve the e-mail messages they store in their account as well as have immediate access to Yahoo! Search for results from the Web. The company is making it easier than ever to switch to Yahoo! Mail's award-winning service with new tools to quickly transfer address book information from another e-mail service, and effortlessly notify contacts of the new e-mail address.

"Yahoo! Mail understands that online security is vital to consumers, and through our development and implementation of the DomainKeys authentication solution, we are actively helping to protect consumers from threats like e-mail spoofing and identity theft," said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of Communications Products, Yahoo! Inc. "Yahoo! Mail has been delivering a reliable and valuable e-mail service for more than seven years. Our e-mail experience, coupled with our technological expertise, helps Yahoo! to continue to enhance our service and deliver a leading e-mail experience to our users around the world."

Increased Spam Protection

With the implementation of DomainKeys, Yahoo! Mail has put new safeguards in place to improve consumer protection from e-mail spoofing, a spamming technique that is being used in an increasingly dangerous form of identity theft called "phishing." Phishing is often used by spammers to obtain consumers' personal information, such as passwords, Social Security numbers or credit card information. The technique has been coined "phishing," because spammers pose as a trustworthy company or brand in order to fish for valuable personal information.

Drawing from its technological expertise, Yahoo! developed and implemented the innovative DomainKeys technology to validate the origin of a message and is providing it royalty-free to the industry at large. Based on cryptographic technology that uses encryption and decryption methods, DomainKeys is recognized as a leading authentication solution for protecting against the e-mail forgery and phishing issues. With DomainKeys in-place behind-the-scenes, at the system level, consumers will automatically receive increased protection from these harmful spamming techniques.

Yahoo! Mail: Continuing to Enhance

Additional enhancements announced today reflect Yahoo! Mail's continued commitment to introduce compelling and valuable features to its users worldwide. Enhanced features include:

--Increased storage & attachment size - Users of the free Yahoo! Mail service can now enjoy the flexibility of 250-megabytes of storage and a maximum attachment size limit of 10-megabytes, while premium customers maintain the 2-gigabytes of virtually unlimited storage and a new maximum 20-megabtyte attachment size limit.

--Advanced search of e-mail and the Web - In line with Yahoo!'s commitment to provide the best search experience on the Web, Yahoo! Mail now provides an even easier way to find and sort messages and attachments, conduct basic and advanced searches of e-mail, and access Yahoo! Search results. This can be done through the new prominent "Search Mail" and "Search the Web" buttons within the e-mail inbox.

--Transfer contacts - Yahoo! Mail has now made it even easier for consumers to switch from other e-mail services to award-winning Yahoo! Mail by quickly and easily transferring address book contacts. With the new import contacts feature, consumers can effortlessly import all their contact information into Yahoo! Address Book when they set up a new account. Additionally, Yahoo! Mail is the first, among the leading free e-mail services, to allow people to notify all the contacts in their Yahoo! Address Book of their new address, so that people never lose touch with their friends, family and colleagues.