Yahoo! Advertising Services (formerly overture.com) email address leak

A long, long time ago there used to be a company called Overture.com that did online advertising, and it was acquired by Yahoo! some time ago.

Now, I use a unique email address for every service I use, and today I was surprised to see the address I used for Overture being used in this spam. I believe this is the first time that I have ever seen spam to this address, so I assume that this is a recent leak of addresses (and Yahoo! has had all sort of problems with breaches at the Heatbleed bug recently).

The botnet sending out this spam does seem to have access to leaked email data that I haven't seen used before. So is this an early warning of yet another problem at Yahoo?

Yahoo! "We want you back" email mystery

Here's a minor mystery with something that looks very much like a phishing email..

From:     Yahoo! [noreply@email.yahoo-inc.com]
Date:     14 June 2013 08:42
Subject:     We want you back
Signed by:     email.yahoo-inc.com

Yahoo!    
We want you back.
Sign in now    
     

Keep your account active by signing in before July 15th, 2013.

By reactivating your Yahoo! account you can experience the new Yahoo! Mail, more personalized content on Yahoo.com, and so much more.

Once your account is reactivated, every time you sign in, your account will be extended by 12 months.

Need to reset your password?
Assistance is here!

Have additional questions?
Visit Customer Care

   
      Yahoo! Customer Experience    
     

Privacy Policy  |   Web Beacons in Email

It just looks so much like a phishing email that a sensible person probably wouldn't click on it.. except, the links in the email actually go to Yahoo! and the email has been signed, so this really does appear to be a genuine email.

Except for one thing.. the email address that it was sent to has never been used to register a Yahoo! account. Yup.. something somewhere is not right with this email..

Yahoo!'s explanation can be found here.

Lazy 419 spam

Is it me, or is the quality of scam spam going down these days? This fake lottery notification doesn't even try to look convincing.

Subject: Easter Notification(You have won 953,000:00gbp)
From: "UK THUNDERBALL LOTTERY" delroyclarke@nf.sympatico.ca
Date: Thu, March 27, 2008 11:50 am


You won 953,000:00Pounds in the Uk thunderball online Lottery held on
25th of
March 2008.
Contact Person.
MRS GAIL NEUVILLE
E-MAIL: ukthunderball_claimlottery4@yahoo.co.uk
contact her with your details:
1.Name.
2.Address.
3.Nationality.
4.Age.
5.Occupation.
6.Phone/Fax.
Regards
Mrs.Gail Neuville

I think I will give it a miss, thanks.

Incidentally, you can report spam like this to Yahoo through their online reporting tool. The user ID you are reporting on is everything before the @ sign on the Yahoo email address. It is worth stating that even through the spam doesn't come from the Yahoo network, it does use a drop email address at Yahoo to process replies.