Hack your own email account...before someone else does (Part 3)

As you may recall, I decided I would try to hack my own Yahoo email account and see if Yahoo might try to notify me of the hacking attempts.

My first try took this form...

I tried to log into my account on 26 successive attempts, feeding passwords ranging from the single letter 'a' to 'z'.

Each time, I was greeted with a message saying the password was incorrect, but nothing beyond that.

I then logged onto my Yahoo account with the correct password, checked my email, and nothing---no warning that someone had tried to log into my account 26 times in succession with an incorrect password.

My second try took this form...

I tried to log into my account on 100 successive attempts, feeding the single letter 'a' as my password.

Each time I was greeted with a message saying the password was incorrect, but nothing beyond that.


I then logged onto my Yahoo account with the correct password, checked my email and nothing---no warning that someone had tried to log into my account 100 times in succession with an incorrect password.

I'm pretty much convinced now that Yahoo doesn't care if someone tries to hack your Yahoo account---no surprise, I guess, since I get so many spam emails from Yahoo accounts and followups from my friends saying they've been hacked.

Even if Yahoo had directed me to another page, that might make the job of hacking my account harder.

As it is, there's simply a message displayed that the password is incorrect, and I'm still on the log in page.

This will end my attempt to hack into my own Yahoo account.

My next attempt will be to try to hack my Google Gmail account---I suspect that will have better security.

Stay tuned for Part 4.

Hack your own email account...before someone else does (Part 2)

As you may recall, I decided I would try to hack my own Yahoo email account and see if Yahoo might try to notify me of the hacking attempts.

My first try took this form...

I tried to log into my account on 26 successive attempts, feeding passwords ranging from the single letter 'a' to 'z'.

Each time, I was greeted with a message saying the password was incorrect, but nothing beyond that.

I then logged onto my Yahoo account with the correct password, checked my email, and nothing---no warning that someone had tried to log into my account 26 times in succession with an incorrect password.

I'll try this later again today with a little more aggression and see what happens.

Hack your own email account...before someone else does

I've been getting strange emails from people pretending to be friends of mine, inviting me to follow a link of some kind.

The 'from' portion of the email contains a name of a friend (looks like from Facebook,) but the email portion is some strange Yahoo email address that doesn't match my friend. Here are some of them...
 
y6a5b236b1b29f97@yahoo.com
info@noktaawat.info
FingerhutAffordable578@everyoneishappynow.in
yeba055b91e@yahoo.com
jlcharno@yahoo.com
y0ddacd03e3@yahoo.com
cruzbnwjwh@yahoo.com
flavius.ardelean@yahoo.com
gayrat.gayipov@yahoo.com

You have also probably received some strange emails from someone who actually is a friend, only to have them email you a day or 2 later to tell you that their account has been hacked.

This got me to thinking as to how secure my own Yahoo account is.


I have a Yahoo account, I use it primarily for Fantasy Football and Baseball, but it also includes email.

Suppose someone were to hack or attempt to hack my Yahoo account?

Would Yahoo tell me if someone tried to guess my password 3 times? 30 times? 300 times?

I decided I would try to hack my own Yahoo account.

Login with my userid, and purposfully feed it bad passwords.

How long can I do that before Yahoo lets me know of suspicious activity on my account.

My suspicions are that I probably won't get a warning anytime soon.

Having once received death threats from a Yahoo user back in the late 90's, and having reported them to Yahoo only to have them tell me they couldn't really help me, I'm wondering just how good Yahoo security is. 

I have several other email accounts----my intention is to try this with all of them and see what happens.

A good security system should either disable my account after 3 bad password entries, or at least warn me that someone is trying to tamper with my account.

Most of my very important web portals notify me of changes or attempted changes to my accounts---banks for instance.

What about Email accounts?

I'll get back to you with the results of my self hacking attempts.