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Daniel asked: “How can I protect my Yahoo! e-mail account from being hacked?”
Daniel, normally we’d say “to protect your email account from being hacked, use strong passwords, change them regularly, and beware of phishing scams”… but you said Yahoo!.
The problem here is that you can do absolutely everything right, but it’s the company that keeps getting hacked, not the individuals. They’ve had a good couple of months, but up until recently, it seemed like every now and then they’d come out and tell us about “another billion accounts hacked, oops.” There’s nothing you can really do to prevent that other than ditching Yahoo! And hoping the next email provider happens to be better at securing their own data.
Generally speaking, you should be able to expect the big guys to know what they’re doing.
Generally speaking, you should be able to expect the big guys to know what they’re doing. Google and Microsoft, for example, secure far more delicate things than someone’s weekly offers email from Walmart, so they should be well versed on how to properly encrypt things, and they certainly have the money to pay for solid security.
There’s a problem with that line of thinking though: Yahoo! Was one of the big guys too.
Ultimately, all you can do is try not to fall for scams, use a strong unique password, change that password regularly, and… maybe move away from Yahoo!.