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. 

Jimmy John's Protested for not Giving Employees Sick Days

Jimmy John's tainted sandwich made by sick worker

Something really sick has been made public by Minnesota Jimmy John's employees. They started a campaign to make a point that Jimmy John's employees are not given sick days. So they made the poster above to illustrate the point that it is unfair as well as unhealthy for the public to eat a sandwich made by a sick Jimmy John's employee. Moreover, former employees share stories of how they were punished for calling out sick, and unreasonable forced by the manager to find a replacement for their shift, or be punished.

The viral poster above points out that you would not be able to tell if a sandwich was made by a sick employee of the company, and that Jimmy John's should do something about it.

Should Jimmy John's Employees Protest their Employer over Sick Days?

If you are going to work for a company, when you agree to their terms of pay and other compensation, you agree to the terms. You don't start working for them, and then make a campaign against the company as an employee. That is grounds for termination, and is damaging to the company's reputation.

The employees involved were fired from Jimmy John's, which then filed a lawsuit against the company in 2012. The National Labor Board Review Board reviewed this case and sided with the fired employees, and has ordered Jimmy John's to give the "whistleblower" employees their jobs back.

According to an Inquisitr article, Jimmy John's was also identified in a news story about food-borne sickness in the state of Washington due to raw clover sprouts with E. coli.

Below is a video of former Jimmy John's employees that were fired from the company, and they want people to be educated on Jimmy John's practices.

For more information on the Jimmy John's campaign to get employees sick days, visit: www.jimmyjohnsworkers.org

Miss Asia Pacific World Loses $100,000 Crown and International Title for Dishonesty

Miss Asia Pacific World refuses to give up crown

Miss Asia Pacific World, May Myat Noe has been accused of "stealing" the crown given to her as winner of the international title. The official website has now blacked out her picture, saying that she has been dethroned as Miss Asia Pacific World. She lost her $100,000 crown, and title for being dishonest and rude. She offended the organizers of the pageant, with some saying she never showed them the proper respect. From the moment she arrived, the South-Korean organizers acknowledged that they paid for her to have breast implants so she could look "more beautiful" for the pageant. They paid £6,000 pounds for breast enhancements. 

The now ex-queen, May Myat Noe, is from Yangon, Myanmar. They accuse her of stealing the crown, because they rescinded her title of Miss Asia Pacific World, and she refused to give back the $100,000 crown.

May Myat Noe, Miss Asia Pacific World

Ultimately, May Myat Noe was accused of lying to her pageant managers, and now stealing the crown, which led to her downfall as Miss Asia Pacific World. Hia Nu Tun was acting as her manager unofficially, and was involved in a discussion with pageant organizer over who should oversee her career as Miss Asia Pacific World. May's mother also was wanting to be her manager.

Burma started sending women to the pageant in 2012. May Myat Noe won the title in May 2014, opening a door of opportunity for Burmese women to have opportunity with international success.

Image credit: Flickr CC; by Hilda Solis