According to Correspondent Scott Carr, if you feel you’re being targeted by government hackers, officials at Yahoo say they’ve got your back. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer said Yahoo joins numerous other tech companies taking similar measures as privacy issues are becoming increasingly front-and-centre: Facebook, Google and Twitter all warn you if they think you’re being targeted.
Yahoo’s chief information security officer, Bob Lord, writes, “As part of this effort, Yahoo will now notify you if we strongly suspect that your account may have been targeted by a state-sponsored actor. We’ll provide these specific notifications so that our users can take appropriate measures to protect their accounts and devices in light of these sophisticated attacks … If you receive one of these notifications, it does not necessarily mean that your account has been compromised. Rather, we strongly suspect that you may have been a target of an attack, and want to encourage you to take steps to secure your online presence. In addition, these warnings to our users do not indicate that Yahoo’s internal systems have been compromised in any way.”
Yahoo is not disclosing how they determine an attack is “state-sponsored.” Lord said, “In order to prevent the actors from learning our detection methods, we do not share any details publicly about these attacks. However, rest assured we only send these notifications of suspected attacks by state-sponsored actors when we have a high degree of confidence.”