Yahoo Knows Best, Resets Users' Marketing Prefs

Anonymous Coward writes ""Yahoo is pulling a good one on everyone. As a matter of some changes on their system, they have kindly reset everyone's marketing preferences. So,when you signed into Yahoo for a Yahoo ID, you were given a chance to set what sort of notices you wanted yahoo advertisers to send to you, well, they just set EVERYTHING to Yes for you. The poster was kind enough to include instructions on how to turn these settings back. In related news, we've signed you all up for a /. newsletter! (I am so just kidding.) To change this...

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 page

http://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.

Comments

The right to spam?

[68030]

If yahoo is offering all of it's features as a
free and publically accessable system, don't they
have the right to do whatever they want with
the default settings? Granted they due operate
on the sole basis of being used, but I wouldn't
get up in arms if something that I used for
free just up and changed one day in some way
that I didn't agree with. If it really has
such a huge negative reaction from enough people
then yahoo make other changes. However somehow
i doubt that the hundreds of thousands of yahoo
users are all in that slashdot mindset.

there are alot of droids out there.

Re:The right to spam?

[A55M0NKEY]

They are free to delete my account, change services, or do whatever they want to with the account which I admit is theirs because it is on their servers ( though if I am paying they should play by different rules ) But if I entrust them with my email address that is hosted on my ISP's mail servers which I pay for, and specifically opt out of their marketing lists, and they breach the terms under which I entrusted my email address to them by sending me spam, then they ought to be sued.

Disgusting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm absolutely disgusted with Yahoo's behavior here...

It's one thing to activate "Yes" on all those email spam options, but I provided Yahoo with my address and phone number when I made a credit card purchase through Yahoo Travel. I'm pretty sure I was told that these would be kept confidential and were mainly for the purpose of credit card verification. At any rate, I trusted them with these details.

But it turns out they put "Yes" on my phone number and physical mailing address, as well.

I'm really disgusted with Yahoo on this. They've gone too far.

This is implied by their privacy policy

[Fastolfe]

From http://privacy.yahoo.com/:

New categories of marketing communications may be added to the Marketing Preferences page from time to time. Users who visit this page can opt out of receiving future marketing communications from these new categories or they can unsubscribe by following instructions contained in the messages they receive.

This might imply that you must explicitly "opt out" of new marketing categories. If all of these options are relatively "new", then it's consistent with their privacy policy. It doesn't excuse the fact, however.

** Just do what I did!!

[MImeKillEr]

I simply went in and added their mailing address and phone number as my primary contact. Now, their marketing department will be sending their own contact info to their partners.. Maybe if we all did this, they'll get flooded with all their own goddamned SPAM!

Re:** Just do what I did!!

[cr@ckwhore]

I usually type in root@127.0.0.1 as the email address... let 'em clog up their own mail server.