Yahoo and Hotmail Enable Fraudsters While analyzing the fraud catching fishing nets on BellYard Sales today I noticed that all the fraudsters have a striking similarity in their tactics; they all used free email services. Yahoo and Hotmail seem to be the preferred choice, but mail.com and AOL are not off the hook. Between the Big Four free email services they account for over 96% of the blocked email accounts on BellYard Sales this week. I would imagine that percentage is similar on most online sites.
Should Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL be held accountable?
It’s hard to hold an email service accountable. Some might argue that they are equivalent to the getaway driver in the bank robbery but I consider them more of the car. Would you arrest the car markers at Ford Motors if an Explorer was used in a bank robbery? Absolutely not, so I don’t think holding Yahoo accountable is a solution. Would it work? Of course, but for the millions of honest free email users the punishment would be transferred to us good guys.
Should free email services do more to protect people from online fraud?
Absolutely! They should take a page out of the books from some of the more fraud conscience websites and do simple address verifications (AVS). If a user registers and claims to be in Seattle, Washington but their IP address shows up in London, UK or even Washington D.C. for that matter, the new account should be denied. Bye bye, Western Union scams. See ya later scammers claiming to be in the US and located elsewhere. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out “Mr. Smith” who just inherited millions and wants to give me some of it if I give them the account to transfer the money too. AVS is a simple solution to the problem but only one of many that would need to be made to make free email services free of being an accomplice in online crimes.
Without the free email services could fraudsters still easily attempt to swindle millions of dollars from Americans?
Initially, no. You would get rid of a majority of the ‘fly by night’ fraudsters and leave the crimes only to the hardcore tech terrorists. There is still ways for the tech savvy to mask their location and take over a persons computer to avoid the AVS net, but for every tech savvy fraudster, there are a hundred more that don’t have the juice to make it happen.Like all crime, it evolves over time, but if the free email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL did more to protect all consumers and websites the crime wave would drop drastically.
Buy and Sell Safely,./Casey
BellYard Sales 
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