‘Yahoo Mail Box has Exceeded the Storage Limit’ Phishing Scam Email

According to this email, which purports to be from Yahoo, your mailbox has exceeded its storage limit.

The message, which begins with the greeting “Dear Valid User”, claims that you will not be able to send or receive email until you click a link to “re-validate your mailbox”.

It warns that the account will be suspended if it is not verified within 72 hours.

However, the email is not from Yahoo and the claim that you must click to verify your account is a lie.

If you do click, you will be taken to a fake website that asks for your Yahoo account email address and password.

After you submit your login details, you may be automatically redirected to the real Yahoo website.

But, the scammers can now use the information you supplied to take control of your Yahoo account. Once they have gained access, they can use your account to distribute scam, spam, and malware emails in your name.

Email accounts sometimes do exceed their allotted quota. If that happens, some mail systems will send an automated message informing you of the problem. However, no legitimate mail administration system is likely to threaten an account closure or demand that users click a link to log in and verify their account.

Moreover, no legitimate service is ever likely to use the weird greeting “Dear Valid User”.  And, these days, very few email service providers would have a limit as low as 1 GB. (Yahoo Mail now offers 1000 GB storage as standard).

If you receive one of these emails, do not click any links that it contains.

Email phishing scams like this are very common. Be wary of any message that claims that you must click a link or open an attached file to deal with a supposed account problem.

Always login to your email account via a trusted app or by entering the address into your browser’s address bar.