Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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 <-
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.
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.
Yeah, why don't you go set that up? I'm sure that a judge will be just ecstatic to hear about how a bunch of people using a free service are upset at what the people providing the free service want to do with it. I'll sign up just as soon as I can . . .
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
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 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
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.
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!
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.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice.
... Which is pretty much whenever they feel like it.
Even so, lawyers have been known to have differing opinions about and interpretations of law. That's why as a final tie-breaker in tough cases we sometimes refer people to a group of nine highly respected lawyers.
They're plain and simply not free to change this or to use information you provided for other purposes. Prove it. If all this does is result in you getting email from them then they have only contacted their own customers, which is not illegal. In fact, their terms of service clearly state "Yahoo provides its service to you, subject to the following Terms of Service ('TOS'), which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you." Which is pretty much carte blanche to do what they want.
Furthermore their privacy policy states: Yahoo! does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you've requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances: We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Yahoo! under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information.
Finally, they clearly are in the business of providing services in exchange for your acceptance of targeted advertising. This is not SPAM (which is not typically targeted in any way). This is simply targeted advertising delivered via email.
I do not have a signature
[...] 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.
It's been a while since I created my Yahoo! account, but by the time you receive this screen with marketing preferences, you've already given them your contact information, a decision you've made solely on the information in their terms of service and privacy policy.
THEN they ask you what your preference is regarding using your contact information for marketing purposes. You've already given implicit consent for them to use it by signing up in the first place (according to their privacy policy).
Now, I still consider it very shady and unethical for them to turn around and say, "I know you said no, but we don't really care," but:
a. I don't *think* there's any legal issue here; and
b. This is all assuming that these 'marketing categories' existed when you signed up in the first place. Their privacy policy seems to imply that they can add 'marketing categories' to their site later and assume an 'opt-in' policy for everyone that doesn't explicitly re-visit and opt-out.
So while I'm just as annoyed at Yahoo! as everyone else is, and find that this practice (assuming it was even deliberate) to be very shady, it's definitely arguable as to whether or not legal retaliation is warranted or possible.
(In my opinion.)
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
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
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.
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 thought I was ok too until I went here:
http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount
See the posts above to find the link that already selects "no" for everything and all you have to do is click "ok".
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.
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).
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.
... 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!