I rather like this. I guess it could feel like an invasion of privacy – but the truth is: all web companies have been tracking you like this since the late 1990’s. Until now … they used the data, but never shared it with the you, the user. This is so much better:
Note how it’s “with valid password” – this isn’t a mere “someone tried to login and failed” – it’s someone succeeded, but Yahoo’s noticed this isn’t a usual login IP address / location for you…
(2013 is looking interesting: As Microsoft kills hotmail, and Google makes radically unpopular changes to their services … Yahoo seems to be the one doing good (after years of negligect, of course))
1 reply on “Yahoo’s “unusual activity” detector…”
I’ll be sticking with google for a few reasons:
1. Google has two-phase auth. Finding out that someone has successfully logged in isn’t much good if they’ve… already done it, changed your password & security question and locked you out.
2. Google’s spam detection runs rings around Yahoo. I have an old yahoo account I periodically log into. It’s absolutely choked with tens of thousands of spam emails! My google account receives a handful of successful spam mails every month.
The only downside to google is the aforementioned UI changes and the faceless nature of the company. I can’t really imagine having to reclaim my account if something goes wrong. It’ll be a ticket floating through a pipe in a maze somewhere.