Incredibly now, it’s the lead up to Christmas which means more online activity sharing with the people who are important to you as well as shopping, organizing events and researching festive products and services through Yahoo!7 Search.  So I urge you to ‘stay safe online’ during this busy period by adhering to the excellent advice on the Stay Safe Online initiative.

You may be planning holidays but remember that spammers don’t ease up at this time and security can be compromised if you’re not vigilant.  Whilst Yahoo!7 has powerful and effective tools to prevent spam, detect spamming activity and reduce the risk of compromised email accounts, it’s a daily and industry-wide problem.  Damage can occur through a variety of ways – malicious software being installed silently on computers, users logging in unknowingly via a phishing page, having a common or easy-to-crack password and more.  In these cases, it’s vital to change your email password and scan your computers immediately to secure your account.

1) Change your password immediately – you can change your Yahoo!7 email account password at https://edit.yahoo.com/config/change_pw.  If you can no longer access your account, you can get a new password at https://edit.yahoo.com/forgotroot/.  Important: If you use the old password at other sites, we recommend you change it for those accounts as well. Furthermore, don’t revert to the old password at any time; that password can never be used safely again for any of your accounts.
2) Scan your computers for malicious software. If you have an anti-virus program installed, make sure to update it and then run a scan. Do this for both your personal and work computers (ideally you should be doing this periodically – put it in your Calendar). If you don’t have an anti-virus program and are using a Windows computer, you can try Microsoft’s free, anti-virus program here. For more advice and information on keeping your online experience safe, and your email and computers secure, visit the Yahoo! Security Center.

I hope you’ll never have to take these steps with your Yahoo!7 mail account but it’s better to be safe than sorry, that’s for sure!  So enjoy connecting with with your friends, family and colleagues safely and securely as we head towards Summer.

Last month, the newest version of Yahoo!7 Mail went live.  Some of you may have already seen and used it in beta form but now it’s dropped its ‘beta’ tag to become our latest and greatest Yahoo!7 Mail!  We’re proud of it and pleased to offer it to you.  We hope you upgrade soon – it’s easy, just go to our Mail Microsite to upgrade and enjoy the benefits:

Faster: This version of Yahoo!7 Mail is 2x faster than our previous versions of Yahoo!7 Mail, even for those with slower internet connections.
Safer: Globally, Yahoo! blocks over 550 billion spam messages a month and our advanced SpamGuard technology and anti-phishing platform have helped us reduce spam reports by 60 percent.  Here’s to a clean inbox!
Easier: Getting things done in Yahoo!7 Mail is even easier with features like rich photo slideshows, chatting with Facebook friends and instantly responding to messages with the reply bar.  We’ve also got over 50 themes so you can personalise your Mail box the way you like it – just drop down Options menu!

We’ve been building this new Mail for a while now and continually fixing things and releasing new functionality every few months. Have a look at our Help page for some tips to guide you during the migration process – click here.

Finally, even though the ‘beta’ label is no longer on the Mail product, we’re continuing to improve Yahoo!7 Mail.  There is a long list of features and functionality we’re tackling in the coming months and you’ll be hearing more!

We hope you enjoy using the new Yahoo!7 Mail.

1.      Install and renew your security software and set it to scan regularly.
2.      Turn on automatic updates on all your software, including your operating system and other applications (this will mean you have the latest version).
3.      Think carefully before you click on links and attachments, particularly in emails and on social networking sites.
4.      Regularly adjust your privacy settings on social networking sites.
5.      Report or talk to someone about anything online that makes you uncomfortable or threatened – download the Government’s Cybersafety Help Button (click here for more info).
6.      Stop and think before you post any photos or financial or personal information about yourself, your friends or family.
7.      Use strong passwords (including capital letters and numbers) and change them at least twice a year.
8.      Talk within your family about good online safety.

Visit www.staysmartonline.gov.au for more information, advice and tips on safe and secure online practices.

• PROTECT YOUR IDENTITY – your personal details are private and invaluable – keep them that way and away from scammers
• DON’T RESPOND – ignore suspicious emails, letters, phone calls or text messages – press ‘delete’, throw them out or just hang up
• DON’T LET SCAMMERS PUSH YOUR BUTTONS – scammers will play on your emotions to get what they want
• RESIST THE PERSONAL TOUCH – watch out for scammers posing as someone that you know and trust, or pretending to know you.

Scammers stop at nothing to target victims, including adopting a personal touch. Increasingly scammers are finding ways to get information about your personal profile and use this to play on your relationships with people and organisations you know and trust.

The effects of scams on victims can be devastating, potentially causing psychological, financial, familial and social harm. Scams can also have a considerable impact on business, with fraudsters’ misuse of people’s trust in reputable brands or companies having the power to shake consumer confidence to the core.

Don’t let scammers into your life – make sure you protect your identity.

Check out Scams: It’s Personal for more information on National Consumer Fraud Week, an initiative of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce.

Yahoo!7 understands the value of getting a range of developers together in a competitive environment so comfort zones can be challenged and amazing things can happen.  The data the participants will be accessing is provided by the government so is open and allowable.  Yahoo!7 has been working closely with government departments on many security initiatives recently (Safer Internet Day, and CyberSafety) and now it’s time to have some fun!  So many thanks to the organisers for putting this event on for technology enthusiasts such as ourselves (okay so we’re more than enthusiasts, we’re totally committed!).

Yahoo!7 has a score of engineers participating in this exciting and challenging government event.  Other Yahoos will also be on hand during the day to help developers, assist in proceedings and speak about the YQL platform, a platform which is speeding up the process of building great applications, such as apps for Mail.

Yahoo!7 will be doing our best to compete and we’re especially keen as not only will we be assisting external developers to more easily access appropriate government data but it’s an opportunity for our own beloved engineers to showcase their skills, hone their creativity and celebrate their involvement as cutting-edge developers.  Wish us well!

Yahoo!7 and Insafe have joined forces on Safer Internet Day to highlight ways to stay safe online when gaming or using social networking – have a look:

• Think before you post. How you represent yourself online — the way you play games, the photos and texts you share, the design of your avatar, and what you have on your profile – all add up to who you are. Invest in your online image.
• Be a good sport. Virtual games can be fun, but remember to treat other players with respect. If you wouldn’t do it on the field, don’t do it online either.
• Take action and report bullying. If you stand by and watch, laugh, or do nothing when you see bullying happen, you become part of the problem. Take the opportunity to create positive change.
• Spread smiles with your phone. Texting is core to staying connected with your friends. What you text is a reflection of you, so be thoughtful about what you say so you can be confident that your texts portray you the right way.

Did you know that Yahoo!7 works collaboratively with industry peers, child safety groups, government and law enforcement to find new ways to protect children online? Yahoo!7 is a very proud partner to the Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing led by the Inspire Foundation. Yahoo!7 also supports the work of several non-profit Internet safety organisations including the Safer Internet Group, Alannah and Madeline Foundation, Bravehearts, Common Sense Media, Family Online Safety Institute, Internet Keep Safe Coalition, and the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as efforts from governmental groups such as the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

“Online safety has long been a priority for Yahoo!7 and we are proud to celebrate Safer Internet Day with our Yahoo!7 Safely site in Australia,” said Samantha Yorke, Legal Director for Yahoo!7.   “With Yahoo!7 Safely, we are giving children, teens, and parents the tools they need to make smart digital decisions and to deal with the important online issues they face every day. It’s important that we take a proactive approach and work together as a global community to help foster a safer online experience for all children.”

The first initiative – Yahoo!7’s recently launched Australian safety website http://au.safely.yahoo.com/ – brings together a wealth of information and resources for parents and educators to encourage everybody’s safety online.  It provides simple tools and useful resources so parents and educators can take an active role in influencing how teens and younger children can make smarter and safer choices online.   Of course, Yahoo!7 wants to provide teens with resources as well, so the site features a ‘Teens’ tab with language geared towards teens.

The Yahoo!7Safely website covers important topics such as managing digital reputations, avoiding cyber-bullying, and learning how to minimise risks on mobile phones.   It also showcases safety features from many of the Yahoo!7 online services, including Yahoo!7 Messenger, Mail, Groups, Answers, Games, Search, Mobile, Pulse and Flickr.   Go to Yahoo!7Safely and have a look around – there’s bound to be something new for you to learn or discuss with your community.

The second initiative, the ‘cybersafety button’, is from the Federal Government’s Consultative Working Group on Cybersafety – of which Yahoo!7 is an active participant – specifically the Dept of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE).  The Group recently developed a free app that sits on a user’s desktop and provides links to the Help pages of many popular online products and services.  It also provides general advice and tips around staying safe online.  Yahoo!7 is very pleased to be involved in this online safety initiative as it offers a range of cyber safety information in one spot.  Click here to read more about the cybersafety button and to download it.

Yahoo!7 welcomes your feedback via cybersafety@ymail.com and looks forward to hearing your views on how we can make the Yahoo!7Safely site and the cybersafety button even better!

We’re very excited about our new Yahoo!7 Mail Beta  product.  It’s got an elegant design, it’s easy to navigate and it provides a central hub for all your comms and social needs – with Mail, Instant Message, Facebook and Twitter updates, photo slideshows within Mail and more.

We invite you to take a look yourself!  To view, log into your Mail and then go to this site. Have a squiz and have a play.  Don’t worry, you can easily revert back to your current Mail by clicking Help and choosing ‘Return to Original Mail’.

We hope you like our Yahoo!7 Mail Beta version as much as we do! David McDowell, Sr. Director of Product Management, Yahoo! USA, says more below in his post.

Lucy – Yahoo!7 Mail

If you follow our blog, you’ve heard about Yahoo! Mail Beta and seen a sneak peak of the new product. Today, you will get the chance to I’m pleased to announce the release of Yahoo! Mail Beta, which delivers a faster, safer and more social email experience. Let me give you a tour of what’s new in the product.try it yourself.

Speed thrills
A faster email experience is at the core of Yahoo! Mail Beta. We built the product from the ground up to be fast so you can be more productive. In fact, Yahoo! Mail Beta is more than two-times faster than previous versions of Yahoo! Mail. You can learn more about how we enhanced the performance of Yahoo! Mail Beta at the YDN Blog.

Be gone, spammer!
Spam can be distracting, irritating and downright dangerous. We block more than 130 billion spam messages every month to deliver you a safer place to email. And, our focus on battling spam has earned us the highest marks among our competitors, as noted in a 2010 study by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute.

Yahoo! Mail everywhere
If you use Yahoo! Mail on the iPhone, iPad or an Android device, the look and feel of Yahoo! Mail Beta will be familiar. We designed Yahoo! Mail Beta to be sleek, elegant and consistent across devices.

Beyond email
There are many ways to connect with the people that matter to you. That’s why we invited Twitter into our social stream. Now you can read your friends’ tweets, retweet or compose your own 140-character message alongside Facebook posts and Yahoo! status updates all from the What’s New page. In addition, we made our IM and SMS features more productive because you can organize your conversations in separate tabs, switch between text and chat conversations and dock the conversation window when you are multi-tasking.

Photos and videos
Email is a great place to share private photos and videos with friends and family. Now you can browse rich slideshows from Flickr or Picasa links and watch video clips from Flickr and YouTube right from your email.

Find stuff faster
We’re using Yahoo!’s wealth of search science and technology to make email search faster. A new left-hand column helps you navigate, sort and narrow your search results by sender, attachment file, date or folder location.

We’re just getting started
As you can imagine, we have big plans for Yahoo! Mail Beta. Our engineers designed Yahoo! Mail Beta in a way that lets us make changes fast, so stay tuned as we release new enhancements over the coming months.

Now it’s your turn to try Yahoo! Mail Beta. You can switch back to your original Yahoo! Mail any time. And, please note that Yahoo! Mail Beta will not be immediately available for Yahoo! Small Business users or users on some older browsers and operating systems.

We want to know all about your experience and we hope you will tell us what you think by leaving us a comment. Check back to the Yahoo! Mail Blog for more updates.

David McDowell

Sr. Director of Product Management

Yahoo! Mail

Here at Yahoo! we’re always striving to give our users the best possible communications experience across all the devices they use. In recent months we’ve released some great new Yahoo! Mail products for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod touch and Android phones. Now we are setting our sights on the iPad.

If you’ve used our recently launched HTML5 mobile Web mail for iPhone you’ll feel right at home. We’ve kept all the things users love about our new mobile Web mail experience, while also optimizing for the gorgeous large screen of the iPad. You can expect the iPad experience to be:

• Faster and more reliable: If you’re offline, Yahoo! Mail uses local caching capabilities to help you access and search your messages even without an Internet connection.

• Smart: You can find and organize your messages using Full Search, personal folders and Smart Folders with messages from your most important contacts and optimized views for photos and file attachments.

• Feature Rich: View rich photo attachments in their full form, or as previews directly in the inbox view. Also includes a dual-pane view to make reading and organizing a breeze.

The new Yahoo! Mail experience will be available globally to anyone who has an iPad. So if you do have one, simply open up Safari and head on over to http://mail.yahoo.com to try it for yourself.

Of course this is just the first version, and we’ll be constantly iterating to add new features, improve performance, and make Yahoo! Mail for iPad the best it can possibly be. And please let us know what you think. One of the great things about working on Yahoo! Mail is getting so much direct feedback from our users. It’s so exciting to hear about how people are using the products, and also to hear your ideas for how we can make our experiences even better.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about the new Yahoo! Mail for iPad. Enjoy!

Tasla – Yahoo!7 Mail team

Just a quick recap: Apps in Mail let you activate all sorts of additional features that enhance your experience.

And to introduce this new app, here’s Fernando Saturno (a former Yahoo! and friend), Director of Product for Fontself in his own words.

Enjoy, Tasla Worth – Yahoo!7 Mail Team

———-

We are really proud to announce that Fontself is now available in Yahoo!7 Mail. With the new My Cool Fonts application, now you can add a bit of colour and style to your messages using a variety of original hand-drawn fonts, and send eye-catching emails to your friends.

Just remembered it was your friend’s birthday? Want to let someone know how much you miss them? How about making the invite for your upcoming party a bit more memorable? Or even better, why not send a funky message to your friends just for fun?

With My Cool Fonts you can always find a cool font that suits your mood and gives your email messages that very personal touch. Your personalised emails will not only stand out in a crowded inbox, but will also surprise your friends and even put a smile on their faces.

Creating colourful emails using our original fonts is very easy. First, click on this link to take you to the Applications gallery where you can install the My Cool Fonts application. Just launch the My Cool Fonts app from the Applications menu, select a font, type a message, click on “Create email” and Voilà!! A new email gets created, and you can then add any other text or attachments to your illustrated message.

Be creative! Whether you are trying to impress your friends or getting your point across in a funny way, there are plenty of styles and colours to choose from in our growing library of free fonts.

Below are samples from just of few of them:

Most of these fonts have its own set of smileys, which you can browse and easily insert into your message from the Smileys menu. See the complete list of smileys here

We’ll also be adding some very cool personalisation features very soon, so keep an eye out for them!

Enjoy!

Fernando Saturno – Fontself