What is Yahoo! Confidential? Is Y! Confidential Toolbar Malware?

Yahoo! Confidential

What is Y! Confidential Toolbar?

Yahoo! users are reportedly seeing a suspicious Y! Confidential toolbar pop up in the right hand corner of their screen. Is Y! Confidential related to the Operating System you are using?

Many people that use Yahoo! want to know what is this suspicious looking toolbar that keeps popping up in the bottom right hand corner of their screen when on various Yahoo! webpages. It could be malware or a virus that was downloaded onto your computer pretending to be associated with Yahoo!

Example: If you are in news.yahoo.com/health/ you will notice the Y! Confidential toolbar.

Y! Confidential toolbar

This is what we do know about the Y! Confidential toolbar:

1. The links on this toolbar do not work, which supports the theory that it is still in beta testing.
2. It is suspicious looking, especially with the virus or malware type of bug on the toolbar
3. If the toolbar did take you to another website, it may be considered dangerous. It seems harmless at this point.

Is Yahoo! Confidential Toolbar is a Coding Experiment?

One person on Yahoo! Answers says that backyard.yahoo.com is a place where only Yahoo! employees have access to, and that Y! Confidential toolbar is a coding experiment that is in some kind of testing phase.

Yahoo! has not publicly acknowledged or stated what this toolbar is, or even if it is an experiment.

What is Yahoo! Confidential? Is Yahoo! Confidential Malware? 

More importantly, people are wondering if the Yahoo! Confidential toolbar is malware or even worse - a virus. When you hover your mouse over the Y! Confidential part, it appears to be a link that takes you to: https://backyard.yahoo.com/globalcomms/Confidential.html

However, when you click on it, it takes you to a webpage that says: "Page Not Found" in IE or "This webpage is not available" (in Chrome). Since the links don't actually take you to another site, we can rule it out as a phishing scam. That would require the actual collection of your personal data. Yahoo! Confidential appears to be a coding experiment that is not yet live, or has not been properly removed from Yahoo! webpages.

The answer is: No. Yahoo! Confidential toolbar is not a virus. It is not malware, either. It is the intranet for Yahoo! employees, and the public is not supposed to be able to see it when visiting Yahoo! sites. It is a glitch if you can see it. (see the Yahoo! Answers explanation at the bottom of this post).

If you have any more information on the suspicious looking Yahoo! toolbar, please share in the comments section below.

How do I get rid of Yahoo! Confidential toolbar?

How do I get rid of Yahoo! Confidential toolbar?

The Disappearance of Yahoo! Games

The Latest controversy with Yahoo! is the sudden disappearance of Yahoo! Games. Games on Yahoo! were formerly found at: http://games.yahoo.com - If you happen to go there now, it is missing. If you are on the Yahoo! homepage, and click on the left sidebar under "more" there is "games" under the letter G. If you try and click on games, it will take you back to the Yahoo! homepage.

Does anyone else find this to be strange that Yahoo! Games has quietly disappeared while no one was paying attention?

Update: As of 12/18/16, "Games" is no longer listed under Yahoo's Products and Services.

Yahoo! Products and Services screenshot 12-18-16

The Data Breach of Yahoo! Voices

Here is some public knowledge which might have led to the end of the online publishing service Yahoo! Voices. In July 2012, Yahoo! Voices was compromised with a SQL injection attack. As a result, half a million usernames and passwords were compromised, and stored in plain text.