July 28, 2006

Yahoo! internal security not so great?

I got a phishing email from somebody wanting to steal my PayPal username and password. They set up their server on a machine owned by Yahoo. Being the good internet citizen I try to be, I sent Yahoo! an email to tell them about this security issue, addressing it to their abuse department and attaching the email from the phishers. They replied with a canned letter explaining that they don't open attachments due to security issues.

I read a couple of things into this...

  1. Yahoo! does not equip their abuse department with the tools they need to safely read email. I can't imagine how this could be--why don't these people have a way to deal with attachments both troublesome and legitimate, when their job is to take care of problems? It's not rocket science to isolate these emails so they can do no harm.

  2. Yahoo! does not want my help. I provided them with precise details and evidence that a phisher was using their machines, and despite this, they could not be bothered to investigate--merely because I enclosed the message as an attachment.

I wrote back to Yahoo! and explained that there are secure ways to deal with attachments, and maybe they ought to use one of them. I also added that I wasn't requesting their help, I was providing them with information important to their business, and as far as I'm concerned I already did far more than I needed to help them out, and if they felt this was important to them, they would find a way to read my attachment.

What did I get back? A second copy of the email informing me that they don't accept attachments.

I probably shouldn't be that surprised.

Posted by Pat at 12:42 PM

December 07, 2006

Good service from Avis

I'm actually happy about something for once :-)

I returned a car to Avis at the Philadelphia airport (PHL) last night. Ten minutes later, I realized that I had left my cell phone in a cup holder, so I went back there to see if they found it. The checkin folks could very easily have told me to go inside and fill out a form because they were busy, but instead a couple of them looked around, and one of them spent ten minutes finding the car. I left the lot with my phone and a smile. Thank you Avis at PHL for this bit of good customer service.

Posted by Pat at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)