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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.
Anyone care to comment on the US legality of signing people up to snail mail, telemarketing lists after they've explicitly opted out? Seems very dubious to me.
The bright side of this is they also reset my info so that I would get all these offers sent to my Yahoo email account. All I use Yahoo for is Fantasy Baseball so they can spam that email account to their hearts' content.
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?
IANAL, but I wonder if there is an opportunity for a Class Action case here? Does Yahoo! have the right to do this?
I must say, Yahoo! seems to have gone way downhill in the past year or two. I just don't even go there anymore.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
... and of course an ISP that doesn't block port 25... =)
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 didn't get anything... I just turned everything else off and made sure they had fake contact info.
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.
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 <-
Well, I can't speak for 'everyone', but I got an e-mail notifing me of a privacy policy change today, but nothing saying that all my preferences were set to yes. If it weren't for slashdot, I wouldn't have known about the change until I started getting TONS of spam, and even then I probably wouldn't have known exactly where to go to fix it.
Thanks whoever submitted this story!
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
These marketing data, as set by the user, could have been a very valuable commodity to sell to other companies. Those companies would have a very good idea of what to market to these users as a result. This makes this kind of information quite valuable. However, in resetting all of the user's preferences to be interested in everything, and given that most users will probably not give a rat's ass and change it, then these data become worthless to 3rd parties because it does not provide them with any new information. So effectively, Yahoo killed off an asset that could have been worth the money to rent and/or sell to others.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
...Yahoo announced that it will change its marketing slogan from "Do you, uh, Yahoo?" to "You WILL Yahoo."
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.
I prefs for marketing have stayed the same. In addition to having a spam/product registration e-mail account at yahoo, I also belong to some clubs and groups. When I looked at my prefs, they had not changed.
I have noticed that the mail-forwarding has ended. All of my pr0n stays on yahoo.
All I know is that whoever lives at 123 Fake St. in my town is going to be very offended at the manner in which mail is addressed to them.
Can we build a new internet and start over? This one is starting to smell funny...
I've been trying to get my parents online for a couple of years now. Not an easy task when I live thousands of miles away and can't provide much in the way of instruction. So far its been a nightmare. Machines pre-installed with the full trojan-horse marketing one expects from a windows machine. Their doors to the web, AOL, MSN... all of it making their experience feel like getting 500 new cable channels that are all just different versions of the Home Shopping Channel. Email with a GUI that looks like Mickey Mouse has hacked your pop mail account. Lots of shiny clunky flashy advertising for people that really don't buy shit anyway...
The desperation with which corporations and their advertising machines come after us makes me very uneasy about the stability and future of our economy. The pyramid scheme can't hold... I can't afford/don't need any more crap.
"The U.S. Constitution - not perfect, but its better than what we have now"
This is why communties like this are important. I would have had no clue this was happening. Thanks. I was able to make the changes. I also changed all my contact information in my yahoo account to let them know how I felt about them!
Bastards.
i always wonder if, when an article is submitted by an AC, the person works for the company that is behaving badly. if so, kudos to them for doing what's right.
go get it
I went to this url:
And sure enough everything was set to "yes".
But what I want to know is, why on earth would you give Yahoo! your real address and telephone number?? My account is all lies.
Then again, I only use Yahoo to track my portfolio.. I hardly use any of the services.
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."
NOTICE: Since you've posted to /. we have kindly modified your preferences
[Y] Spam
[Y] Pr0n
[Y] support HP merger
[Y] something..something...cowboyneal
Have a nice day
Okay, I just checked this, and Yahoo signed me up for all of the spam in the world, without notifying me. It is possible that a notice was posted somewhere on their web site, but I certainly didn't receive any email about it.
-Mark
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?
delete your account
The Daily Build
They clearly state what they're offering in return for what they're taking. They provide you with a certain type of email with certain types of marketing, while you provide them information and bet battered with annoying blinking ads.
They're plain and simply not free to change this or to use information you provided for other purposes.
hawk
Um, I use two Yahoo addresses outside of my mail address: one that gets used whenever websites want me to register to get in, and one for a few Yahoo lists I'm on. Neither of those accounts know about my real email address. There's a field when you're signing up that asks you for another email address, but it's entirely not required.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Putting fake information in is not a good idea. According to the agreement (which you agreed to by signing up) they can revoke your account for false information...of course, they'd have to find out but they've got their fingers in many pies...
internet like monkeys'
In related news, we've signed you all up for a /. newsletter! (I am so just kidding.)
We SO just have to wait and see...
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.
Other Delivery Indicate other ways you want to receive the special offers and marketing communications you have selected.
via U.S. mail [X] Yes Novia phone [X] Yes No
Before you start whining and moaning about accountability, maybe you should take the five seconds necessary to do some research yourself. The entire point of the article was that Yahoo is slamming its users' preferences without notice, which is why you didn't recieve a notice, genius.
Well, if they want to spam snail mail addresses and phones, give them some addresses to spam to!
Enter these in your home/work preferences, and only turn off the email spams:
Yahoo! Canada
106 Front Street East
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 1E1
Phone: 416.341.8605
Fax: 416.341.8800
------------------
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Tel. (408) 349-3300
Fax. (408) 349-3301
Tel. 408-349-2000
I'm sure yahoo would LOVE to hear from their advertisers any day!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Yahoo gets more and more obnoxious. I dropped "Yahoo Store" years ago, when they started wanting a cut of my sales in addition to a monthly fee.
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!
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
In New York State you can register you phone number(s) on a Do Not Call list. Any telemarketer (with exceptions for politics and those with whom you have a "prior business relationship") who calls a number registered with the state is liable for fines up to $2000. So Yahoo might be able to get away with calling you, but not some other business you have no relationship with who they've given your number to.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Confirmed again. Set all to Yes on two seperate Yahoo accounts.
It hurts when I pee.
So, I just went pay the $19.99 to continue to use the POP services at Yahoo. It is worth it to me for that amount. I find out though that I *must* create a Yahoo Wallet to do so. To use the Wallet service I must give Yahoo my credit card info FOR THEM TO STORE. This is "for your convenience". Then I look at the Wallet TOS and see this: "Yahoo! will not be responsible for any purchases or errors made under your account or Yahoo! Wallet". So you're going to force me to let you store my number but will not take any responsibility for it. Forget that! Its one thing to make purchases online, another to let somebody store my cc #. I've used Yahoo mail and the POP service for a long time since it allows me to keep one email address regardless of ISP. It looks like that is coming to an end!
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.
Just set your address and phone number to their address and phone number and let them receive all your bulk mailings and telemarketing calls.
'Same speed C but faster'
Yahoo has been providing forwarding for @rocketmail.com addresses ever since they bought them out. Does anyone know if they are planning to charge for this also?
"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."
Of course who reads e-mail that comes from a yahoo account. They probably sent it and it got caught in a filter.
Something else interesting is that since I've just gone to Yahoo's site, now when I hit F3 to repeat my last search in IE, the Yahoo homepage pops up in a little sidebar window. Coincidence?
Suppose all of us Yahoo users were to draft a hardcopy letter that goes something like this...
Dear Yahoo,
By copy if this letter, I am opting out of all marketing lists; my contact information is not to be used by Yahoo for marketing purposes, nor is it to be sold, shared, leased, lent, or revealed to any third parties. This letter supersedes any website settings and is in response to all past, present, and future requests for marketing permission. Any future requests for permission will be ignored, since this letter will serve as your notification until revoked by me in writing.
Should you make use of my contact information anyway, I will invoice you $5000 per message as a "reading fee". Abuse of my contact information constitues your agreement to pay the "reading fee", in addition to collection costs, court fees, and reasonable attorney's fees. I understand that $5000 per message is quite expensive -- do not use the service unless you intend to pay the fee.
I would love to see a service that offered to auto-send this kind of letter to all the "opt-in-by-default" morons. Even better if it could help facilitate the collection process.
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 what we can tell here, they sent the notification only to people who previously had checked "yes" for service change notification preferences.
So the only people who got a note about the update were the ones who didn't care enough to turn these off in the first place.
Like many, I'm more than a little peeved by this. If this is "okay," then every website you've ever given contact info to can do the same, claiming "Of course we didn't tell you we were starting to sell your name again. You told us not to send unsolicited mail!"
"By using Yahoo and viewing advertisements, you agree to have a behavior-modifying microchip implanted in you hippocampus, and will allow the corporate logos of our advertisers encoded in your junk DNA."
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.
...if you were dumb enough to give them your primary e-mail address. I always give outfits like this a hotmail one and they can spam the shit out of it for all I care. In the case of my Yahoo account, the e-mail they have is one I haven't used for two years now, so spam away boys!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Just change the e-mail address to marketing@yahoo.com. Change the snail-mail to something in North Korea, Iraq, Somalia. Or perhaps something more subtle. Distant towns in Alaska that can only be reached by dogsled when things are frozen? I bet they could use the burning material. Use your imagination. Be creative.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Here is a page that explains why yahoo has made these changes:
3 .h tml
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-2
At the bottom of the page, you can click on the "no" button to go to a contact form where you can tell Yahoo exactly why their behaviour isn't acceptable.
I wasn't so upset over them resetting my email preferences, but I was *pissed* that they also reset my phone preferences. That's going one step too far in my opinion.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
To leave a user input for the email that all the "partner" announcements are to be sent. I left all my choices to yes and changed the email account to abuse@yahoo.com
HAHA, stick that in your spam hole and smoke it.
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 work with a lot of older people who don't read Slashdot, but have Yahoo. I made sure to tell them about this new disgrace. For all those at work, please do the same; it's a courteous thing to do, and your workplace will be a helluva lot happier.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Yahoo Groups is home to a lot of special interests that I follow, mostly astronomy-related. The participants are getting particularly annoyed at the ads, since they foist them off on the email-participants as well as the on-website participants, who have been slogging through ads to read the damn list for some time now.
I don't mind advertising, it's a necessary evil for a lot of websites. But when it gets to the point that it drives people away, you're doing something wrong. The people on these astronomy lists are not rabid anti-spam geeks, they are not the type to setup automated Spamcop-reporting procmail recipes on their inbox. They have a lot of disposable income, since astro-imaging is not exactly a cheap hobby to get into (expenses are comparable to owning a large boat or an airplane, in many cases). Those are the people being driven away by excessive advertising.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Do you think if enough people added Yahoo to their block lists they would get a clue?
Clue by 4's are in rare supply at yahoo today.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
You'd be amazed the number of free-registration-required sites you'll be able to get into using billg@microsoft.com and the zipcode in Redmond as a password.
Nope, no sig
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
When you turn off the marketting preferences, it turns off forwarding/pop3. it doesnt go into effect perm until April 24th. But you NEED to have the "yahoo delivers" stuff under your mail options set to "send me crap"
i noticed this too.
But I just noticed that my street address and phone number are way out of date in my Yahoo account. I just updated it. Here's my new street address, to which all my paper mail will be sent:Of course, no one but me should be using that street address. I wouldn't want to get flooded with a bunch of paper spam at "my" street address, so don't any of you go changing your street address to send me any of your offers. No sir, that would not be very nice. Don't do that.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I have been a long time Yahoo user. I use the "My Yahoo" page daily, my @yahoo.com e-mail address is my primary web mail account, and I have purchased several things through the Yahoo shops.
The amount of spam on yahoo mail has jumped dramatically in the last few months. I have noticed that the spam has more and more personal information (first name, last name, etc.). Their ads have also become much more intrusive and obnoxious.
So, today I went through and removed every bit of personal information from my yahoo accounts & preferences. I was surprised to see just how much was in there.. It takes some digging, make sure you follow all of their sub-categories. I deleted information wherever possible. Some places did not allow blank entries (addresses, phone numbers) so, I replaced them with bogus entries.
And, yes.. I know they need to make money to pay for their services. But they need to be careful to avoid pissing off too many customers, or their usage goes down & they have to add more ads & sell their data to more spammers to stay afloat.
I love it when /. headline sounds like something from the onion.
Is you want to use POP you must pay for the privilige. This was either on C|Net or a yahoo announcement. Since I never used the POP feature it was no big deal
IIRC the fee is $20/year.
HTH
Just sign up anyone listed in these documents.
That should nip this in the bud in 60 days or so.
Yeah, yeah, I know this post is too late for anyone to read, but I thought I'd say it anyway. After reading this article, I not only went to reset my opt-outs, I changed all my personal information to something more appropriate... like a fake address and phone number.
Face it, Yahoo! is on a slippery slope, and going down fast. Every time they pull one of these shenanigans, they loose customers. I was already cutting loose from their e-mail due to the no-free-pop decision. I use their my.yahoo as my default browser home page, but about one more such "marketing decision", and I'll be moving over to MSN or some Lycos.
I think there's a technical fault going on with at least some international Yahoo sites at the moment.
I've just been to check my marketing preferences, and there were no options listed. The page was there, a check-all link was on the page, and there was a save button, but there weren't any options listed.
Furthermore I went to check the terms of service. I was told that I'd have to agree to a new terms of service for Australia and New Zealand "described below", but apart from that statement there was a blank page with an Accept/Deny button at the bottom. All I can conclude is that there's been a technical error or they've withdrawn their terms of service. (I'm betting on the former for obvious reasons.)
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-23.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/730862.asp?0dm=C18KT
--- Biffster.org
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
Free service? Not POP/SMTP access or forwarding of Yahoo! Mail... I've been quietly abandoning my (previously useful) Yahoo accounts.
Off-topic, but does anyone know of any scripts which will automate the retrieval of webmail messages and queue them in your regular mail spool?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Still sleazy, but maybe not as bad as you think - they won't be spamming you right away, and you DO have the opportunity to decline between now and then.
Confirmed here too. For god's sake go into your profile and clean all your private info out like address and phone number. They could cancel your account if you give them fake info, but when was the last time that happened to anyone. Definitely don't give them any more info than they require. Last I checked a street address and phone number are not required, just a ZIP code and birth date.
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...
Just add "ybl.megacity.org" to your standard DNSBL configurations in your MTA of choice and away you go.
This public service brought to you by...me.
D
I just set my email address on Yahoo to investor_relations@yahoo-inc.com. That (hopefully) will take care of that problem.
On another note, how does one go about getting rid of a Yahoo account? I'm gonna miss my TV listings, but I wasn't really watching it that much anyway. And the movie listings were pretty handy as well. Anyone know of a replacement site where I can get that info? (Our local theatre is a small chain and isn't really into the web that much.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
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.
And you should address the mail to Srinija Srinivasan, since she's the one quoted in the article as being all behind this new move.
A better number would be 349-3300 (the main number, press zero for an operator).
D
I already had yahoo.com messages flagged as spam. I thought with the move to a pay system they'd drive out the spammers, but instead they've decided to become spammers themselves. No problem, they can stay in the filters.
Is it me or did they top off the pref-unsetting experience by rewarding me with a pop-under? :P
Amusingly enough, the CNet story got onto the syndicate feeds and ended up on the front page of My Yahoo.
Note also at the bottom, that you will be marked YES for 'By US Mail' and 'By Phone' as well.
:D
This should be pretty damn obvious, but you shouldn't give them your real US mail address and phone number anyway when you sign up. I almost never give those out, and guess what? I get maybe one telemarketing call a month (neener neener neener!) And when I do get them, I tell them to go f--k themselves, which usually deters them from calling back. Perhaps that's actually what they're doing?
Basically, what it comes down to is that if you want your privacy protected, you have to really take steps to guard it yourself. You can't just give your information out to anybody that asks for it and expect them to respect your privacy.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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).
I found it very interesting that the new privacy policy so explicitly specifies what will happen if they are acquired. Something has to be in the works.
Given their recent behavior, it sounds rather like they are trying to fit into the AOL culture.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Yesterday I wrote an article on how Google, for all its good Netizenship, has sold out to the spaming industry.
If you enter the search query "bulk email" you'll see that Google is quite happy to play its role in the promotion of spamware and spamming services -- by way of the list of paid-advertisements down the right-hand side of the page promoting such products and services.
Surprisingly, I had a raft of feedback from readers who seem to think that there's nothing wrong with Google carrying paid advertising for the promotion of spamware and spamming services.
I know that over the past seven years I've started and run (and sold) a number of very successful ad-funded online publications and I've never felt that I had to stoop so low as to accept advertising dollars from spammers.
Perhaps I'm just one of a dying breed of entrepreneurs who are prepared to put his money where his mouth is in the battle against spam.
I see this latest move by Yahoo to simply be part of a slow but inevitable move towards the day when we're all forced to swallow our daily diet of spam along with the few little morsels that are actually real email.
I'm tempted to keep the settings as they are. A while ago I set my mailing address to:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500-0001
At any rate I'm noticing the site is running a tad sluggishly. Have we slashdotted Yahoo?
HotMail did the same... even set "Share my registration information" to yes. This info includes county, region, state, ZIP, gender and a few other goodies.
nope. this is common to just about every preference or email management page has buttons bot top and bottom. this is actually a nice feature since you don't havt to scroll all the way down to the bottom of a page to hit 'submit' (or vice versa). 'course, just hitting the enter key usually submits the form anyway.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
woof.
... is to lie. Apparently I'm a female construction worker, and only 3 years old too - :-)
precocious, huh
The important thing is the age - if you're less than 13 they don't bombard you with any crap at all...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Another TrustE certification I noticed on the linked page... You may delete your account at any time. =)
I just did. Bye bye Yahoo IM, Groups, Maps, etc. accounts. Too bad for them. Maybe if enough people leave over this, they'll change some policies. But if they don't, I'll just keep going about my business elsewhere.
when I tried to email the list administrators, with an individual email to each but cc:d to abuse@yahoo.com, all but one of the emails were refused thus:
We are unable to process the message from <xxxxx@xxxxx.co.uk>
to <xxxxx-owner@yahoogroups.com>.
You may not cross-post a message to moderators of multiple groups
simultaneously. Your message to the moderator of the xxxxx
group was not delivered.
For further assistance, please email support@yahoogroups.com
or visit http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/
So I tried removing the cc:, and that didn't work either. It seems that once you've emailed the owner of a group, Yahoo looks out for emails to other group owners, and blocks them. So I had to post to the lists instead, with an explanation and apology for posting to the group. Does that suck, or what?
You can have your domain, yeah. Setting up and maintaining software to run email server is free?
Sure. I've already got a high-speed static IP for $34.95/mo, and the server running, so it's only a couple of lines in the /etc/files.
I don't know about you, but fiddling with the settings of my linux box quickly goes from "fun" to "I'd pay someone good money if I didn't have to bother with this". Usually sometime around 3am.I know the feeling. :) I quickly got over it, though. My webserver and firewall do their own things independently of anything else. I don't touch 'em except to do patches. The electricity usage is still less than $xx/mo for hosting, and the benefit (in the winter, anyway) is that the electricity they consume still contributes to heating the house... even if heating electrically is more expensive than heating by oil. Typically, I have to heat for 8 months of the year, one way or another - mid-September through mid-May.
In my case, anyway, it makes perfect economic sense. And, another benefit is that I can use Samba to drag and drop large stuff to my webserver so that friends can download it conveniently. (Main machine still runs Windows, unfortunately.)
Well, yahoo is a rather nice email service as far as webmail goes. Much better than hotmail, certainly. Looking at all theYup. But $20/year seems a little steep for POP3 access, especially given the above.
Personally I use another service, which is even more expensive than yahoo. But they have fascist spam filtering and IMAP among other things.Who? Fascist spam filtering sounds interesting...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
If for some reason, your browser or some other helpful software decides to resolve that to www.localhost.com , you'll get a helpful page explaining that your DNS configuration is probably not correct and pointing you to some common problems.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My hotmail account had some default birth year on it, like the 1997 that I got the account. When they put in the new law about protecting information for children under 13, they blocked my account until my parents gave permission for them to reactivate it, complete with documentation that those "parents" were over 13. Not wanting to give them real documentation, I decided that I could use another disposable account somewhere else instead.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks