Getting dozens of "...(fake person)... wants to connect with you on Yahoo!" messages a day, why?

It's a Botnet, and it's been hitting practically all Yahoo! Services fairly hard, Gentle Asker.

Answers gets the most flagrant attack--with repeated spam postings of a Hostile IP Address that's a clear Malware Downloader site that's _clearly_ been designed to be a copycat, or a look-alike of Yahoo! Answers. Despite the flagrant Illegal Conduct (Hostile IP Address, Malware Downloader site, Copy and Paste Spamming acrosse _Hundreds_ of Multiple Accounts), Yahoo! Answers sees fit to do nothing to block or IP Ban the spambots, when they could do so easily. All they have to do is block and react to the _exact_ string of characters (letters, numbers, etc.) of the Hostile IP Address itself.

Yahoo! Mail seems to be under attack mainly because the Malware from this Hostile IP site is designed to find, use and exploit Yahoo! Mail with its Contact lists. There's also an element of this attack creating randomized botnet "Profiles" on Yahoo! as well. Again, Yahoo! refuses to pay proper attention to what's going on at their own site--this is not something that would be hard to block or screen out with administrator-level access to Yahoo! systems.

Likewise there seems to be repeated and flagrant spambots (bots who are programmed to send out the same copied-and-pasted spam message over and over again, usually in a modified, "hashed up" language that only vaguely resembles English, and is designed to avoid keyword searching) on other Yahoo! Services, like Yahoo! News (in the comments Area) and in Yahoo! Buzz (also in the comments).

Again, the big picture--the trend--is much the same: Yahoo! generally doesn't do much about it. The tendency is to leave it up to Users to report the abuse, and then demand that the Users _prove_ said abuse in detail (on Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Buzz comment postings) before Yahoo! itself does jack, diddley or squat.

I appreciate your patience with me so far...I'm just trying to work to the "why" component of your Question here. We all know about the "how" side of it--it's a pure numbers game, if you send out a million bots with the same Hostile IP Address, you can bet that two or three people out of that million will be dumb enough to click on the site and infect themselves....and once the computer is controlled by the botnet, another million bots go out...A Day.

I really do think the concentrated attacks on Yahoo! Services is unprecedented--not just in their number, but in the sheer depth of neglect Yahoo! Inc. itself shows toward it all. Yahoo! can pepper us with minor tweaks and upgrades several times a week--they have time to waste on the new "!" avatars for those without pictures--but then they can't be bothered to deal with a botnet? Huh?

I think this hints at "why". Anyone online who uses an anti-virus or anti-malware service (I use both) and takes their reporting functions seriously at all can figure it out: Most of the virus and malware attacks come from very specific places. China. India. Nigera. And nations of the Middle East.

Seriously. Look up the weblog of Malwarebytes.org, or the Forums of McAfee. They know their stuff and where this is all coming from--which IP Addresses are doing it, and where they come from.

Yahoo! could stop this botnet entirely tomorrow--but that would mean using a broad-based Domain Ban. Blocking all of China until their abusive conduct stops, for example. And they don't have the guts as a company to do that. Likewise, they could stop virtually _all_ of the trolling at Yahoo! Buzz and Yahoo! News, in the comments areas...but that would mean IP Banning specific _Businesses_ and deleting specific _Business_ accounts, since it's clear many of these trolls are using the same accounts and coming from the same places--the same employers.

And again, Yahoo! _Will Not_ ever do that. IP Bans never stick more than a month, and nobody _Ever_ deletes an account. Why? More of the numbers game. Yahoo! as business model is driven by ads--by the literal click-through rates on the banner ads they hit us with incessantly. Catch is, that model only works if you have a ridiculously inflated, high number of accounts--if you count everyone who has _ever_ used a Yahoo! Service ever, whether they're active or not, a separate person or not (or just a second or third account for one person). And why count the inactive accounts most sane people have long since left for dead?

Because Yahoo! itself can open them up, hack them and make bots out of them, specifically to drive click-through rates in an artificial manner and maintain profit margins.

It's spam, and spam pays, although it could be a virus attack too. Yahoo users have been swamped by these for a couple of weeks, and Yahoo is working on the problem. Keep deleting all these nuisance connect requests until Yahoo solves the problem.

Not everyone is getting these - you are one of the unlucky ones. The only way to stop them is not allowing any contacts in your profile - that's your choice.

the 1 st thing to do is change your password.and block them.

it's spam or hackers.do not answer.the only perfect way to stop this

is to hide your profile,BUT when you do this your picture is replaced

with a grey box.i took it upon myself to post this on the suggestion board.

why we can not hide our profile and keep our avatar.

i only had 1 answer that said i am 100 percent correct and something

should be done.sorry but no one else including yahoo answered.

i will check again.my privacy is a right..thank you

It appears to be a new way of spamming, if you accept them and connect them it has been reported they give a link to a porn site infected by drive by malware . To stop it I believe you have to make your profile private. However this removes your avatar.

I've been getting these stupid emails too....

I've blocked the email address and all the emails go directly into the trash folder...still it is annoying!

To stop getting the emails go to http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings/email_notificati... and set invites to "No".