Protect Your Email Account with a Yahoo! Sign-in Seal

Phishing is one of the most common forms of email fraud today. Many email users have lost their passwords and their accounts to professional phishers because their email accounts are not as secured as they hoped. One way of protecting your Yahoo! Mail account from phishers is to create a sign-in seal, a secret message or personal image that helps you recognize the authenticity of the Yahoo! page that you are visiting.

Making a sign-in seal

To start making a sign-in seal, you have to click on the Create Your Sign-in Seal link that is found above the blank fields for your username and password. On the Yahoo! Sign-in Seal page, you are provided with two customization options: Create a text seal and Upload an image. If you chose the first option, you have to enter a short message for your computer. You can type any kind of message you want as long as it doesn’t exceed 21 characters or expose your password. But if you’d rather have an image as your sign-in seal, then you should pick the second option. Because it is called Upload an image, the second option requires you to upload the JPG or GIF file that you wish to use as your sign-in seal. Choose an image that is under 2MB in size so it could fit perfectly in the seal.

Customizing a sign-in seal

If you click on the Preview button at the bottom of the screen, the seal that you just made will appear on the sign-in box. The sign-in seal customization services that Yahoo! Mail offers, however, are not limited to the specification of the text or the selection of the image. In fact, you may also choose a sign-in color for your seal! To choose a sign-in color, you just have to click on the tiny dot below the color swatch of your choice. Click the Preview button again to determine whether the sign-in seal satisfies your preferences or not. If you are already satisfied with your work, you just have to click on the Save This Seal button to save the customization changes.