Unexpected Sign-in Attempt

Has anyone ever received a suspicious email from their email service provider and wondered if it is a legitimate email? Well, most people have received numerous if not any of those emails.

Take a look at the email below

Hi Gwise, 
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 3:05 PM GMT-1, we noticed an attempt to sign in to your Yahoo account gwisewisenheimer from an unrecognized device in Croatia. 
If this was you, please sign in from your regularly used device. 
If you haven't recently signed in from an unrecognized device and believe someone may have accessed your account, please visit this link [https://edit.yahoo.com/config/change_pw] to change your password and update your account recovery information. 

Thanks for taking these additional steps to keep your account safe. 
Yahoo

If you are attentive enough, you will start to notice some red flags immediately. The email could be legitimate but what you need to be aware of is that you should never attempt to sign into your email through the link they told you to, always use the browser and head to www.yahoo.com or the correct domain for your email address. 

One of the red flags is the sending email noreply@yahoo-inc.com that seems not to contain the cc after the @ symbol like this noreply@cc.yahoo-inc.com 

But thats not really something you should rely on because someone with an extensive knowledge of the email protocols can make it seem like you just received an email from Tim Cook or even your self with all the correct details appearing in the sender field.  

Take note of the way the email was signed. It says Yahoo instead of Yahoo! This should be another red flag right there. It can also be a genuine email from Yahoo. 

  

You also have to take note of the location that the so called attempt to login into your email account was made from. On rare occasions, it could have been caused by you when you used a new device with a different IP to login. On some rare days, it will be from a location you have never visited from. One thing that can also possibly trigger such a notification from Yahoo is when you login into your email from your usual location and 1 hour later login from a location that takes 8 hours of flying to reach. 

Its imperative that you review your email account activity from the account settings option and see if you can spot suspicious patterns. Never change your password through a link provided in the email, rather login using your email root domain address such as www.yahoo.com or www.yahoo.co.uk. 

The same advice is applicable to users of Gmail, Hotmail, etc.