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Yahoo To Try To Charge For POP3 Services
NetSerf2000 writes: "I just saw an article on the Register that Yahoo is giving users of it's email service until the 24th of April to make a decision about forking out $19.99 for the first year. Yahoo states that this is so it can 'improve' service quality and 'reduce" spam.' The report says that it's the mailing forwarding and POP3 services, so I'm not sure that it affects the Webmail service; if it reduces the spam coming out of Yahoo!, that'd be one less domain I have to filter into "Spam," which would be nice.
I am an all-day user of pop forwarding for my Yahoo account. To be quite honest - I get 0 spam to it as well. I only use it for personal communications and never for buying goods at stores - I let hotmail get all my spam. Anyway, with the belts getting tightened the world over I really don't mind ponying up $19 for a year's worth of spam-free email. I don't think that's alot to ask. I'll be signing up today.
Have a Happy.
Yahoo! is only planning on charging for their Yahoo! Delivers service. This is the service that permits you to access their POP3 and SMTP servers, or forward your yahoo.com mail to another address. Previously, the expense was that you had to sign up for opt-in spam through Yahoo!, but apparently, that wasn't working for them.
Yahoo!'s web mail will still be free, and if you really need the POP3/SMTP/forwarding service, $20 a year really isn't that bad.
In order to use the mail forwarding service, however, you have to agree to receive monthly advertisement emails from Yahoo!. So, you still get the advertisements, just not on the screen in all their colourful, blinking glory.
A large percentage of the spam I receive has a forged Yahoo address in the From:, but the headers show that it actually comes from somewhere else - about half the time via an open relay somewhere in asia.
Most of what I recieve has a Yahoo address in the "from" header, but has been routed through some middle eastern spam relay. You should always check to see what server the e-mail was sent through when complaining to someone about it. I find this is quite reliable in stopping the flow of spam (I've not has spam at my home account this year yet). If the server has no address to complain to, contact their upstream provider.
Follow me
I received the following mail:
o me-id
To: MYMAILADDRESS
Subject: Important Yahoo! Mail Service Announcement
From: Yahoo! Mail
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 02:00:26 PST
Hello,
Important service announcement regarding your POP3 or Mail Forwarding service. Please read on.
Effective April 24, 2002, Yahoo! Mail will no longer provide free POP3 Access or Auto Mail Forwarding to Yahoo! Delivers subscribers.
If you would like to continue using Mail Forwarding or POP3 Access, please subscribe to our improved package that allows you to:
- Use Outlook, Eudora, or another POP3 client to access and manage your Yahoo! Mail.
- Automatically forward your Yahoo! Mail to another email account -- even another Yahoo! address!
- Send larger attachments, now up to 5MB instead of the free 1.5MB limit.
- Send email without the Yahoo! promotional text at the bottom.*
Subscribe before April 24th and get the first year of service for just $19.99. That's 33% off the regular service fee of $29.99. Visit the following link to subscribe:
http://ordering.yahoo.com/or/ypm/...s
Remember, if you do not subscribe by April 24, 2002, you will no longer be able to access your Yahoo! Mail messages by POP or at another email address.
Sincerely,
The Yahoo! Mail Team
For further information, please read our frequently asked questions. Please note that your Yahoo! Delivers settings will not be affected.
*Applies only to email sent through the Yahoo! SMTP servers.
In short, they stick Yahoo with the bounces, and with many of the knee-jerk reactions to the spam.
I get maybe 40 spams/day. Many of these do have From: addresses from yahoo.com. And less than 1% of those actually came from yahoo.com -- the rest were forged. And the (less than) 1% that did come from Yahoo were people mucking around with the mailing lists, trying to use them for spam.
If you're using the forwarding or POP3, then you're not viewing the web-page adverts that are Yahoo's bread & butter.
Actually, in order to sign up for yahoo's pop3 service, you MUST agree to receive 'selected promotions' in your mail. Granted, they give you the choice as to how many (minimum of one per week) and if you want them in text or HTML (thank god), but you don't have a choice. Removing yourself from their 'promotional marketing' list means you can't pop your account at all.
I rarely use my yahoo account anyway.. I think i have three or four that are sitting idle (due to groups and other assorted things) that I just don't bother with. All my group accounts forward to a specific account on my own domain (if it gets too spam-ridden, i change it).
In today's economy, with profits from ad banners down and the average netizen finally showing that they're ready to pay for better services, I'm not surprised to see things like this happening. Almost all of the big web companies offer premium services at a price; IMHO it's a good way for them to make some revenue on a service that people want.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
Free Mac Mini
Novell runs www.myrealbox.com as a demonstration of their e-mail products.
It's free and you get
Pop3, IMAP, SMTP
10 Megs of space
webmail
all free, no ads
I've been using the service for years and I don't ever remember it being down.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The only requirement is that one use a Mac (or Mac-claiming browser) to set up the account; it's at Mac.com. That said aside from certain administrative functions it works perfectly well from the Wintel & *nix sides too. Mail, web serving, WebDAV all are platform independent, indeed MS Windows 2K & XP include WebDAV clients that work perfectly with Apple's iDisk service.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I just wish my email programs allowed me to filter off of strings in the full header
:D
Mozilla Messenger (and I assume Netscape Messenger) allows you to specify a custom header field to filter on. So you can filter on anything in the headers.
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_pop.htm
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If you read the article...
If you were using POP services...
Then you would know that this doesn't affect you. All of my e-mail on Yahoo has been delivered to me by POP in folders or not.
They are NOT charging for web mail users. If you use their folders you are a web mail user.
I used to run an NT box (long gone) that used Communigate Pro. It has a decent web interface and is available on dozens of architectures/OSs. Sure its not free but there are lots of other options out there that are. Actually if you don't mind a one line tag on all email sent out then it is free. I really liked to documentation. It showed you how to filter and block spam right at the server.
Step 2: Redirect traffic from your family domain to the dynamic one.
Step 3: Install Linux on a nice 486 with ~32 MB RAM and at least a 1 GB HD
Step 4: Install apache , sendmail, perl, and maybe webmin if you are completely unfamiliar with Linux.
Step 5: If you want a web front end for your email system, try out NeoMail
Step 6: That's about it, you'll have to mess with the configration files before it runs, but it's worth it. The fact that all your email is automagically downloaded to your local machine is just an added bonus.
Oh yes there is! It's FastMail.FM. It's my service, so I oughta know!