Many Yahoo users have experienced losing access to their accounts for several reasons, such as hacking attempts, no backup email, etc. The team wanted to find a way to keep their accounts safer by making users aware of the importance of taking security-related actions.

How this works

Before users go to the main experience, AHC shows a nag screen that asks users to review the security-related items.

Users can immediately address security items, such as updating passwords and recovery methods, reviewing suspicious attempts, etc.

Product impact, Result

AHC doubled the weekly visitors to the account management page. It increased to 3M from 1.5M, with a 68% of conversion rate to update security items.

Key learning

The strong security message is a double edge blade: "It looks like a scam" VS "I love how it forces me to think account security."

Some parts of users thought Strong visuals and text that asked users to update or review personal information made users think AHC was a scam. On the other hand, other parts of users like how we force it since they think they will not take any actions if Yahoo does not force them to take actions. I had to stick with the original visual and text treatment since it shows advantages, but I had to figure out other ways to make people it trusts the experience.

In identity and security, sometimes better to give up convenience inevitably.

People don't use Yahoo to make an account or log in. So we do our best to make people spend too much attention on experiences related to users' accounts. So they can seamlessly use the main service, such as news, finance, and sports. However, sometimes it was important to intentionally properly break convenience to take their attention and protect their account. Finding the appropriate balance between them is key to successful design.

If you want to know more about this project, please contact me on Linked in.

Yahoo Identity: Account Health Check

Increasing security awareness of Yahoo users

Team