Yahoo! Suspicious activity detected - redirect

Question

While browsing news on MSN - adding a comment to a news article;

Redirect or whatever... showing "Yahoo! Suspicious activity detected". Not damaging but damn irritating.

See screenshot:

I've tried a security scan, malwarebytes etc. Any help would be hot.

Answer 1

Hi BG Leonard,

I understand how irritating and concerning these redirects can be. Based on the screenshot, this looks more like a deceptive Yahoo security pop-up triggered by a webpage or advertisement than a legitimate Yahoo account warning.

Please do not click "Confirm my identity" or enter any Yahoo credentials. Simply close the tab and try the following:

1. In Edge, go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Site permissions > All permissions > Pop-ups and redirects and make sure pop-ups and redirects are blocked.
2. Open Extensions > Manage extensions, temporarily disable all extensions, then test MSN again to see if the issue persists.
3. Clear the cookies and cached data for MSN, then test the site in an InPrivate window.
4. Ensure Microsoft Defender SmartScreen remains enabled, and if the popup reappears, report the page through Settings and more (...) > Help and feedback > Report unsafe site.

Since your malware scans came back clean, this may be a site-level advertising redirect or browser-related issue rather than malware installed on the PC.

If you entered a password or any account information into that popup, I recommend changing your Yahoo password immediately by signing in directly through Yahoo's official website, not through the popup. Otherwise, please let me know whether this occurs only on MSN and whether you're using Microsoft Edge or another browser, as that may help narrow down the cause.

---

If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".  

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.