Tech giants are increasingly doing more to notify users who are the victims of state-sponsored attacks. Google and Facebook will both notify you if they detect your account has been targeted or compromised, and now Yahoo is joining in as well. "We’ll provide these specific notifications so that our users can take appropriate measures to protect their accounts and devices in light of these sophisticated attacks," Bob Lord, Yahoo's chief information security officer, wrote in a blog post.

That echoes Facebook's reasoning; since these attacks are often more advanced and dangerous than everyday risks, they deserve a dedicated alert so that users can take immediate action to keep their account secure. Yahoo says it will only serve these notifications when it has "a high degree of confidence" that an attack has been orchestrated by an outside government or state. Just like those other companies, however, Yahoo is unwilling to detail exactly how it detects such intrusions. Still, if you get one, you'd do well to act quickly and make sure protections like two-factor authentication and a strong password are in place. Yahoo is also encouraging users to check their email settings to ensure that messages aren't being forwarded to an outside address in secret.