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.

Comments

Avid User

[ViceClown]

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.

Re:Avid User

[stripes]

Ack, I just want a nice PERMANENT (and cheap!) email address

I always thought pobox.com was a good service for that. Never used 'em though, never quite needed what they offered.

However one service I do use for very not-permanent addresses is Spam Gourmet which lets you make as many limited life addresses as you like (you can extend their life if you want). The only forward to something else though. I use them for pretty much all web forms and Usenet posts.

Not all email just "Yahoo! Delivers"

[torinth]

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.

Re:It's pretty fair...

[saveth]

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.

Re:Reduce spam?

[jaavaaguru]

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.

Yahoo mail announcement

[harmonica]

I received the following mail:

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/...so me-id

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.

Re:Reduce spam?

[dougmc]

Yeah right! Last I checked 95% of the spam I received came from yahoo.com

Actually, 95% (though I doubt that figure) of your spam CLAIMS to be from yahoo.com. Reading the headers gives a different story ...

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.

Re:It's pretty fair...

[Sc00ter]

The Register never said that they were going to charge for free WEB based mail, just pop and forwarded. So did the email that Yahoo sent to it's users. The guy that wrote the slashdot article is just a moron..

Free, fast, no adverts, stable, lots of services

[maggard]

I've got a free account with POP3, IMAP4 (5 MB storage), SMTP, HTTP & WebDAV (with 20 MB storage) all without advertising. Stable, reliable, (very) fast, without transfer limits, great interface. If I want to pay I can up my storage at $10/10MB per year to a GB. Oh, and their MIME settings are complete and properly configured.

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.