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Yahoo Knows Best, Resets Users' Marketing Prefs
Go to your Account Information screen (for each and every ID you have) and about mid screen you will see "Edit Your Marketing Preferences" link. Click on it and set them back to the way you want them, otherwise get ready for *LOTS* of advertising spam type emails from Yahoo's advertisers. Note also at the bottom, that you will be marked YES for 'By US Mail' and 'By Phone' as well."
In additional Yahoo News, smagruder writes: "Starting today, I noticed that Yahoo! stopped forwarding my mail and when I go to setup/change the POP Access/Forwarding settings, they display a page for me to give them money to get my mail forwarding back. The issue: In their recent widely distributed press release, Yahoo! said that this all would start on April 24, NOT March 28!"
Update: 03/29 20:24 GMT by J : Yes, of course Yahoo is a TrustE customer. For a small fee, TrustE certifies: "You can edit your Yahoo! Account Information, including your marketing preferences, at any time." Isn't that great? I can edit my marketing preferences that I had no reason to know existed! Thanks, TrustE!
Update: 04/07 11:54 GMT by J : Nine days later, Yahoo notified me that these preferences existed:
From: Yahoo! <yahoo_privacy@reply.yahoo.com>
To: [me]
Subject: Message from Yahoo! about changes to our Privacy Policy and your Marketing Preferences[...]
In order to keep you up to date about our many new products
and services and how they might be of use to you, we have
created a new Marketing Preferences pagehttp://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount
within the Account Information area. It is designed to make
it easier for you to manage the marketing communications
you receive from Yahoo! and ensure you get the latest
relevant information to meet your needs. We have reset your
marketing preferences and, unless you decide to change
these preferences, you may begin receiving marketing messages
from Yahoo! about ways to enhance your Yahoo! experience,
including special offers and new features. Your new marketing
preferences will not take effect until 60 days after the date
of this mailing so you have plenty of time to decide what you
want to receive and what you don't. To change your
preferences, go to the Marketing Preferences page.
I think they implemented the restriction on POP3 access a week or so ago. I emailed their support people and got a canned response. I replied to that, as directed, for more assistance. I got the same canned reply. Then I saw that they were going to start charging.
I use this as my "junk" account, anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much. But it's annoying that they can (and will) change my preferences for me. What else are they changing (or monitoring) without my consent?
Did yahoo send out an email telling everyone this had occured?
You got an email saying that their privacy policy had been changed and to click a link to go review your personal settings. I just happened to notice the marketing ones. So they can plausibly argue (in court) if they have to that they did tell users to go review the settings.
Or is this a marketing ploy of some sort?
Well of course it is.
Nope, no sig
I found that my POP access was disabled after resetting the marketing preferences.
To reenable it, you need to go back and turn the Yahoo Delivers! option back on. POP Access/Forwarding require you to agree to this. Once that is done, you should be able to go back into your mail settings and check your settings.
Once I did this, it gave the options for POP/Forwarding access.
-> Capt Cosmic <-
Yes the laws about telemarkting *do* apply. When I signed up for an email account I told them not to call me or give my info to others in short I did in fact opt out. They have now put me on a telemarkting list after I told them to take me off and in fact to never put me there in the first place. It very much does apply.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I went in and signed up for a new account (spambot12321), and I was never presented with a choice for these items. They asked if I'd like other things ("Send me special offers from selected Yahoo! partners through Yahoo! Delivers."), but the items listed in http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount never showed up.
So I don't know about other people who say they've already set these to "no," but at least for new accounts you're signed up for all of it whether you want to be or not. Bastards.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
If you buy something from a vendor that uses Yahoo (its not always obvious), Yahoo goes ahead and saves your addresses and phones "so you don't have to type it in again." Gee, thanks. The time saved can be spent recycling all the paper junk mail I'll be getting.
I found both my home and work addresses AND phone numbers! I quickly deleted them, but as security conscious as I am, I had no idea Yahoo was saving that stuff away for future marketing "opportunities".
Please everyone go check!
Your account will remain in their database for 90 days, then poof gone, but the account is deactivated. For what that's worth. Peace of mind?
CNET had an article on this yesterday. In brief, Yahoo! split their Marketing Preferences into a bunch of categories, and defaulted the new categories to opted-in. They are mailing out notices (a process that will take a few weeks) telling people about the new preferences. They then have 60 days to opt-out.
One of the terms of service for turning POP access on was that you subscribe to Yahoo Delivers. Thus turning it off, they are enacting an EXISTING rule, not adding a new one
The reason your POP3 stopped now is likely because you unsubscribed from the "yahoo delivers!" option when you went to the account information. Yahoo delivers has always been a prerequisite to using pop3 or forwarding. Once you sign back on to it, you'll be able to start the pop3 again.
The yahoo delivers thing is not that annoying, as I have only gotten mail from it like once a month, and a lot of it has been genuinely interesting. The other stuff mentioned in this story you should definitely unsubscribe from though.
I guess this is thier last chance to screw you before they have to stop using the "its a free service" excuse.
Free service? Not POP/SMTP access or forwarding of Yahoo! Mail... I've been quietly abandoning my (previously useful) Yahoo accounts. I suppose they remain useful, but not at $20/year. Call me Scottish, but for only twice that, I can register another domain and have thousands more e-mail addresses.
At 09:42 PM 3/20/2002 -0800, Yahoo wrote:
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.*
Sign up today and SAVE 33%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.
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
In case anyone can't find it..
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-349-2000
[...] we have reset marketing preferences for some of our users. If you are one of those users, unless you decide to change these preferences, you may begin receiving marketing messages from Yahoo! about ways to enhance your Yahoo! experience, including special offers and new features.
Yahoo! is notifying users of these changes to marketing preferences via email. Your new marketing preferences will not take effect until 60 days after the date the email is sent to you so you have plenty of time to decide what you want to receive and what you don't. To change your preferences, go to the Marketing Preferences page.
Well, it doesn't look that outrageous. Still, there's no hint as to why they did it.
From msnbc - http://www.msnbc.com/news/730862.asp?0dm=C18KT
Yahoo users will now automatically have their marketing preferences set to accept updates from a smattering of Yahoo's business. Previously, people were offered one option to either accept or reject product notices when first registering on the site. The new preferences page includes offerings ranging from job listings to new media products and inclusion in Yahoo's user surveys, among other things.
Yahoo users will have 60 days upon receiving notice to opt-out of these promotions.
I apologize if this post seems like a rant. It is. I'm infuriated yet again by this trend of corporate corruption which is more of an explanation than an excuse. I'm really pissed at Yahoo. But I'm even more pissed at AT&T at the moment, but I'll get to that in a moment. At least with yahoo, I can do exactly what I did which was delete or change any possible information that could possibly give them something to sell to someone. Then I changed my password to some really freaking obscure password that I'll never remember in a million years. I tried to cancel their account, but to no avail, I can't seem to find out how to cancel my account. I tried. But their little rat maze doesn't seem to be set up for people to cancel their accounts. I'm not surprised.
:) I feel better now.
Now on to AT&T. I have a question. Has anyone else had the experience of calling AT&T directory information to find a number only to be told by some automated voice, "Press pound to hear the number." At which point, you press pound happily expecting to hear the number. Instead of hearing the number, you instead hear the voice of the receptionist of the place you desired to call manually. Keep in mind I always write down the number so that I can manually call the number instead of paying the , "I'm a lazy moron." tax. Most non-thinking people would dismiss it as a freak occurence. I don't. I verified my facts. I got charged the moron tax against my will. I'm confident many others have been charged this tax against their will as well. Now I desire to verify it. How many of you have been charged the moron tax against your will? If it's thousands of people who have been subjected to the "moron" tax against their will, then I'd say AT&T has got quite the scam going and is a shining example of what may soon be widely known as the "Rat Tactic". I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for the moment.
I must say that I am never surprised at the corruption I find in Corporate America.
(One of my personal least favorite scams is the customer service automated systems that never seem to have the option I need unless of course I want to sign up for their service my ISP my cellphone service provider.) You say that's not a scam, but I say that it is especially when I'm trying to complain about something that could result in a loss of millions of dollars by customers collectively, not individually. It feels like a scam that ranks right up there with the guy who took a few pennies out of millions of bank accounts. By the way, is that an urban legend? Even if it is, the principle is sound. And I'd say it's the principle that corporations rely upon the most to jilt the masses out of billions fo dollars. It might be aptly called the "Rip off the masses by small amounts so nobody will notice and you can grow rich in your big house while you watch society decline into a group of mindless drone rats that never complain that wake up every day just to work for you, consume your products, fsck , eat, drink, poop, pay taxes, fart, and breathe while never really having one meaningful thought during the day. (all while using your products)" tactic. Personally, I affectionately call it the "Rat Tactic" for possibly arbitrary reasons.
We, the complainers, the ones willing to speak up are unfortunately a very small minority. "They" count on that and count on their automated systems to oppose our attempts for satisfaction (while vigorously using the rat tactic). Is there any other reason it takes two seconds to get to a customer service rep when you want to order service. But if you want to complain, that's another story altogether. If you want to complain, "they" conveniently use technology to thwart your efforts. The most common mechanism is the setting up automated mazes for us to traverse so that by the time we get ahold of a real person, we're so infuriated that the low level customer service rep immediately calls his/her supervisor for assistance. He, of course, solves MY problem by crediting me the seventy five cents I'm due while happily keeping the money of the thousands of "sheep" rats unwilling to complain.
Well today I was too infuriated to traverse the maze for very long and now I'm venting on slashdot. I hope it sends a resoundingly clear message to Corporate Earth which is this: "We know what is going on and we are growing in numbers and discontent."
At least I hope that's the message that they get, but my message is more likely going to be ignored by the greedy guy in the big house who looks down upon us as rats that need our wheels, our mazes, and plenty of shiny things. Well I've got news for "them", I'm not a rat that likes wheels or mazes. I kind of enjoy using my brain. I don't worship their god of money. I'm sorry, but exercise wheels and mazes just don't do it for me. Though to be honest, I do like a few shiny things. But the truth is I'm not a rat at all. I am a human. And I'm not too distracted with my wheel, mazes, and shiny things that I won't make the time to bitch.
So everybody join me in bitching about something that's bothering you. They can't kill us all. Perhaps we can successfully discourage some of the rampant greed and corruption by curbing peoples' purchasing habits. And maybe, just maybe, we won't become a species that is somewhere between rats running on exercise wheels, the Ferengi, and the Borg.
Thanks for listening
I did find all my settings set to yes ... I promptly changed them...
3 .h tml
I have found this blurb on their help pages
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-2
What are Marketing Preferences and did Yahoo! Change my Preferences?
Yahoo! has grown and changed a great deal over the past few years. In order to keep you up to date about our many new products and services and how they might be of use to you, we have created a new Marketing Preferences page within the Account Information area. It is designed to make it easier for you to manage the marketing communications you receive from Yahoo! and ensure you get the latest relevant information to meet your needs.
In addition, we have reset marketing preferences for some of our users. If you are one of those users, unless you decide to change these preferences, you may begin receiving marketing messages from Yahoo! about ways to enhance your Yahoo! experience, including special offers and new features.
Yahoo! is notifying users of these changes to marketing preferences via email. Your new marketing preferences will not take effect until 60 days after the date the email is sent to you so you have plenty of time to decide what you want to receive and what you don't. To change your preferences, go to the Marketing Preferences page.
Please note that these new preference categories only relate to how Yahoo! communicates with you about Yahoo! products and services. Your Yahoo! Delivers preference, regarding special offers from our selected partners, remains as you selected it.
Assist them in slashdotting themselves. Leave the 'by mail' and 'by phone' option on and set your address to:
:}
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Phone (408) 349-3300
Fax (408) 349-3301
Inspired by MImeKillEr.
For a whole 1 minute of your time, we can collectively inspire Yahoo to slashdot itself.
I also reccomend leaving all the marketing preferences set to Yes, but redirecting the delivery address to your secondary, which can be any of your dearest and most loving advertisers.
I think that the idea has occurred to others, since the yahoo corporate info page containing their address appears to be quite sluggish.
-ted
I have a Mac.com as my main account. It offers free IMAP, webspace, 20MB of WebDAV drive space, too. Great service. I hear it works with Windows, too.
spamgourmet offers unlimited free disposable email addresses that you can have forward to any real address. You don't have to create them on the website, just give one to somebody and it gets created the first time *they* use it. I never trusted Yahoo, anyway...
If you're like many, and haven't enabled pop3 access until now, you are probably discovering that they aren't making it obvious how to enable pop3 forwarding for you. Makes it kind of hard to get your email off their system before it becomes fee based, doesn't it?
What they aren't telling you is that until April 24th, the flag they are using to control whether you have pop3 access is still changable by you!
Here's what you do:
Hope that helps some of you.
I already tried to set my alternate email address to abuse@yahoo, marketing@yahoo, and sales@yahoo - won't take any of them.
There are plenty of sites that offer free email addresses and would be happy to forward to one of those.
There are entire blocks of email addresses that were created for this. Basically any example domain (example.com, example.net, etc...) is defined as being nonexistent to be used in tcp/ip documentation as examples. something@example.com goes nowhere, doesn't consume anyone's bandwidth, and pretty much no one filters for it.
If you give them inaccurate information to the registration questions, you risk having your account deactivated. From the Yahoo Terms of Service:
In consideration of your use of the Service, you agree to: (a) provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as prompted by the Service's registration form (such information being the "Registration Data") and (b) maintain and promptly update the Registration Data to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. If you provide any information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, or Yahoo has reasonable grounds to suspect that such information is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, Yahoo has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).
root@127.0.0.1 is not a valid address. Sending email to such address usually gives some error like unrouteable mail domain "127.0.0.1" because there's no MX record in DNS for 1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa (but I'm not sure if it would work even if there was such record, I'm too lazy to test it). Use root@[127.0.0.1] if you want email to literal ip address bypassing the standard MX resolving (see RFC 822). But the mail server can be configured to reject them, and e.g. my server will give you this error: root@[127.0.0.1] domain literals not allowed.
So the root@localhost is probably the the best choice (but it still sometimes may not work as you expect, if the "localhost" is not set as local domain of SMTP server). But remember that even when you make them spam local root mailbox, it's usually their own account, not the one of their ISP.
When I have to ever register with working email I make alias like spam-from-yahoo.com@my.domain so I always know who sends spam and I can always deactivate such alias. But I have yet to see anyone selling my spam-from-their.domain@my.domain address to anyone.
If you can't easily edit /etc/aliases on
your mail server
(and if you're not your own
postmaster, it's usually true)
check out
spamgourmet self-destructing disposable email addresses:
I don't use it because I have my own mail server and I can do whatever I want (or whatever I can) with my mail address, but spamgourmet seems to be great if you just have one mailbox somewhere like most of the people.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$