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US Congress Bans Members From Using Yahoo Mail (bbc.co.uk)
A week after we learned that the House of Represantives had banned its members from using Google's appshot.com, more details about the blockage have surfaced. Reader Big Hairy Ian writes: A series of ransomware attacks on the House of Representatives has led U.S. Congress to ban members from using Yahoo Mail, according to a leaked email. Both Yahoo Mail and Gmail are named in the 30 April email, published on Thursday by Gizmodo, saying the attacks had increased "in the past 48 hours". Yahoo Mail will be blocked "until further notice" it adds. Ransomware encrypts victims' files and demands a ransom be paid for unlocking. In this particular instance, I think it isn't all of Yahoo Mail's fault. People need to be wary of the links they click on.
In this particular instance, I think it isn't all of Yahoo Mail's fault. People need to be wary of the links they click on.
That's not how Congress rolls. They refuse to take personal responsibility for everything and they have the authority to make someone else pay for their incompetence and/or corruption.
To be frank however, I cannot see any sane reason why our elected officials are not using official government email accounts supported by official government IT workers. It's not like congress doesn't know where to find the money to do it. Why on Earth they would be using Yahoo accounts while on the job is a mystery without a responsible answer.
As a user of both Yahoo mail and Live, it's notable that my junk folder in Yahoo is stuffed with phising emails - easily identified by the difference between the visible sender and the originating email address. By contrast my live junk folder has virtually none.
So why doesn't Yahoo make the effort to kill off the dangerous junk?
If the government computers are on an unrestricted, non-classified network, government workers are not that much different than regular office workers. Some personal usage is permitted as long as it doesn't interfere with work.
If you look at the nature of product recalls, they're generally recalled for one of three reasons:
Product is inherently flawed or otherwise unsafe and cannot be corrected. This covers things like manufacturing the chassis of a product with flawed materials, or using the wrong material, or a design whose intended use is inherently unsafe. Two examples I can think of off of the top of my head are Lawn Darts, whose very concept makes them unsafe, and the Perfect Flame grille, whose housing was magnesium and prone to igniting in a metal-fire.
Product has minor flaws or only a risk of safety-issue, but correcting those flaws will cost too much to achieve. Inexpensive home goods may fall into this category, and sometimes when food products are recalled en-masse it's like this- only a few actual package of a food item may be dangerous, but it would cost far more to test all of the food for the danger than it is to just throw it away.
Users misuse a product and it's not possible to correct user-error. At first this doesn't sound like a product problem, but casual-use products are not supposed to require advanced training to use. There's a threshold for the number of incidents relative to the userbase to be considered, and if too many users are all having similar problems then that's indicative that something in the product itself needs to be changed, as changing human behavior on a large scale is not easy.
Unfortunately software has been allowed to violate #3 and arguably the others for a very long time, as the push for newer/faster/prettier has trumped all other considerations. It's about time that we acknowledge that we haven't really made much improvement in UI in the last decade and that at-best we're reimplementing the wheel, and that we need to forcus on the underpinnings.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I have no problem with using gov't computers for limited personal business. That's perfectly reasonable. The employee needs to understand that business is now a matter of public record, however.
LOL, educate members of the House of Representatives?!? You can't educate people that are already certain they know everything!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just newer/prettier. I haven't seen a newer verison of something be faster in a very long time.
And no the ui wasn't broken before.
I have to point out that even in windows 10 half the settings are in a touch screen style ui and the rest are in a windows 7 ui its terribly inconistant.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Yahoo Mail is simply a vehicle that doesn't appear to me to be any more or less secure than most other delivery vehicles. Yesterday we dealt with some ransomware that came in the form of an email from an employee's spouse that had a link to a landscaping company, and that landscaping company's website had a link (probably an ad) to a malicious site that delivered the ransomware. The employee's spouse contacted their IT, who reported not seeing any ransomware, which is why I'm thinking it was an ad on the landscaping company's website rather than the website itself that had the malware.
Telling Congress "don't use Yahoo Mail, it isn't safe, use official email instead" is giving them the wrong idea that they're safe to click on anything they get in the official email, and doesn't do anything to mitigate the danger of malicious websites. Their official mail might or might not be any better about scanning attachments for viruses. Their official mail would hopefully be better about prevent account hacks, though - it seems that's a fairly common thing for Yahoo Mail.
Do Congresscritters not have standard-issue .gov email addresses, with in-house servers (exchange, apache, lotus, whatever)??
Or is congress saying that members can't use Yahoo at home for receiving recipes from their mom, participating in fantasy football, and/or signing up for Cat Facts.
This signature is false.
For the same reason that I have a corporate email account, but also have a free account hosting my own domain at gmail. I want to keep my work activities and emails separate from my personal activities and email.
In the case of Congress members, they are prohibited from using official account(s) for personal or political campaigning activities that are not related to an official representative purpose. Now why they would use a free Yahoo account as opposed to a paid hosted account I don't know, other than they are cheap, stupid, and technologically inept.
If they fall for some garbage email its their fault, not the provider. If they are so incompetent they fall for some scam it isn't yahoo or googles fault. I guess they will tell people to quit using AT&T or Verizon if they fall for some tech support phone scam.
Just newer/prettier. I haven't seen a newer verison of something be faster in a very long time. And no the ui wasn't broken before.
I have to point out that even in windows 10 half the settings are in a touch screen style ui and the rest are in a windows 7 ui its terribly inconistant.
you have no idea how much i hate touch screen UI on my Win10 computer. I hate it so much. all the control panels are still there but you have to go thru a curtain of simplified touch screen capable control panels first before you can find them EVERY time. It's a nightmare. Combine that with the hugely annoying Function Keys that are media keys and no way to change them to just plain function keys and I'm hating nearly every moment of my Win10 experience so far.
Just another second banana