This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Mail is one of the oldest free e-mail providers on the internet. It was originally launched on October 8 1997, and to date has one of the largest userbases in the world.

Getting Started With Your Seal

On the signup page there is something unique to Yahoo! Mail; the ability to create a sign-in “seal” (see right side):

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Upon click you can opt to use a “text seal” or upload your own image and choose your sign-in seal color.

At the top it reads:

A sign-in seal is a secret message or photo that Yahoo! will display on this computer only. Look for it every time you sign in to make sure you’re on a genuine Yahoo! site. If the message, photo, or colors are different, you may have landed on a phishing site.

When you enable this option, this seal will be shown on the sign-in page itself each time you login.

Important notes:

It is computer-specific. This means that you will see your seal on your computer, but if you use a different computer you won’t.

I opted to use an uploaded image of myself because it’s easy to spot, then clicked “Preview”:

I then clicked “Save This Seal” at right.

You are reminded before continuing that yes, this is specific to your computer and should follow suit on any other computers you own.

On the sign-in page, my seal is now plainly visible:

Once signed in you are brought to the “Home” tab and will look somewhat like this:

On first glance this appears to be a rather complicated interface, but once you learn your way around it’s not that bad.

In the next installment we’ll cover what you can do from here (much more than just check your inbox!)

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