Investigators tracking threat actors, scammers, or specific networks often find that certain actors prefer legacy platforms like Yahoo. By extracting .txt files from 2023 that mention Yahoo—but stripping out the standard Gmail/Hotmail results—an investigator can build a highly accurate contact list or network map of a specific target demographic.
Yahoo (under Yahoo Inc., owned by Apollo Global Management) does not publicly report standalone earnings in 2023. However, estimates suggest:
Profitability: Yahoo was reportedly EBITDA-positive in 2023, but growth was flat. yahoo.com -gmail.com -hotmail.com Txt 2023 -
The minus signs (-) act as exclusion operators. By adding -gmail.com and -hotmail.com, you remove any results mentioning Google’s or Microsoft’s email services. Why would you do this?
Total Active Yahoo Mail Users (2023): ~225 million Demographic Breakdown (US only):
Geographic Distribution:
Demographic Breakdown (US only):
Gender split: 53% female, 47% male
Primary use cases:
In 2023, the "credential stuffing" and "combolist" black market was highly active. Threat actors frequently compile massive .txt files of stolen passwords and emails. Because Gmail and Hotmail dominate global market share, a raw combolist will be 80-90% composed of those domains. A researcher investigating a Yahoo-specific data breach or analyzing a subset of compromised Yahoo accounts would use this exact query to filter out the irrelevant data.