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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.
If you're using the forwarding or POP3, then you're not viewing the web-page adverts that are Yahoo's bread & butter.
So you'd be paying not to see adverts. What a zany idea.
rOD.
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
The most surprising thing about this is that not only do you're wife's grandparents use the internet, they use it enough to be able to forward (what they think are) amusing pictures to you.
Reading email is challenging enough for my parents. My grandparents (those who are still left) can barely use a microwave oven. The concept of actually reading an email, and forwarding one to someone else, is far beyond them!
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
If I remember correctly, the Internet was originally created (in the public manner) for the free exchange of information
No, you do not remember correctly, or you are confusing free as in beer with free as in speech.
The internet was created to facilitate communication, but has never, ever been intended to be free of cost to its users, who were initially academics at universities or research organizations. These universities bore the cost of development and paid for their members to use the internet, just as I had "free" use of the internet as a college student.
Since coming out of college, I have been responsible for paying for my own access to the internet.
Aside from the issue of access, there is the issue of content, eg news sites. In the early days of the WWW, about the only web sites were at universities, and the only published documents were research papers. No ads, but these sites were fully paid for by universities and research grants.
Now there are loads of companies out there who are trying to make money on the internet. Their sites would not exist if there weren't somebody paying to support them, either through subscription fees or advertising.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Yahoo! are you listening: Here is what I want from a for-pay email provider
As myself and other people start using more and more wireless networks (specifically public wireless networks), I have realized that there is no email provider that offers the proper services:
- IMAP via TLS & SSL
- SMTP via TLS & SSL with Auth - Allowing you to send mail from any return address after you have already authenticated
- POP via SSL
- WebMail via Full SSL (not just the login)
- Allow you to forward your other email accounts to it
- Allow you to send from a return email address of your other account (i.e. yourname@yourcompanyemail.com).
- Fetchmail functions for automatic downloading of your other email accounts.
- A reasonable amount of disk storage
- The option to download your email for offline archiving
If other email providers are listening or someone wants a quick business idea, start providing secure email services, and no Hushmail doesn't count because the don't offer POP, IMAP or SMTP. And no I don't want to host this email on my home server like I already do. It needs to something that the mass populous can be referred to.Sidenote to the Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and other top email providers. Please start requiring secure login protocols (no cleartext passwords). The average user is never going to click on that extra link for an SSL login page.
..for a slashdot address?
username@slashdot.org would be nice,
or
user usernumber@slashdot.org.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Also,
Yahoo email is plagued with SPAM.
it's not worth 19.99/yr. because of the SPAM.