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

Re:Illegal?

[Kamel Jockey]

Laws on telemarketing lists most likely do not apply here. In a strictly legal sense, Yahoo could be considered an opt-in list since you explicitly and voluntarily signed up for the service. Because of that, they can do with your account on their servers as they wish. On the other hand, laws governing opt-out lists work because you never voluntarily signed up on a telemarketer's calling list.

It wasn't explicit

[drew_kime]

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.

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.

POP Access disabled...

[CaptCosmic]

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.

In other news...

[e4]

...Yahoo announced that it will change its marketing slogan from "Do you, uh, Yahoo?" to "You WILL Yahoo."

Re:In other news...

[Hiro Antagonist]

More like "Stick it in your Yahoo!", "Take it in the Yahoo!", or "Let's all crowd into your Yahoo!"...

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.

Ok, I just tested this

[legLess]

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.

Thank You for your Post

[shawnmelliott]

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

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.

Re:well whaddya know

[gbell]

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!

For some more info

[edhall]

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.

-Ed

** 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.

Re:** Just do what I did!!

[benwb]

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.

Re:** Just do what I did!!

[Shiny Metal S.]

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

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:

After you save and confirm the email address where you'd like to receive messages, you can give out self-destructing disposable email addresses whenever you want as follows:

someword.x.user@spamgourmet.com

where someword is a word you haven't used before, x is the number of email messages you want to receive at the address (up to 20), and user is your username. For example, if your username is 'spamcowboy', and you give this address to somebody (or, more probably, some thing):

spamelope.2.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

the address will be created here the first time it is used, and you'll receive at most two messages (forwarded to the email address you specify above) on the address. The rest will be indelicately consumed. That's it. You won't ever have to come back here.

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.

Re:It is (was) a free service

[BigBlockMopar]

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.

What THEY say

[doru]

The Yahoo Privacy Center Help page specifies that :

[...] 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.

Re:not just privacy, but contract

[Fastolfe]

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.)

Been doing that for a while

[drew_kime]

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.

Yahoo offers are GREAT!! Opt-in!!

[kindbud]

I didn't uncheck any boxes. I want all those Yahoo offers to be sent to me in the postal mail. They are just too good to pass up! And I want all my Yahoo offers to be sent and stored on my Yahoo account. Soem of them are valid for YEARS after they are sent. You never know when you'll need one, so I'll keep them all on my free-of-charge Yahoo mailbox, forever.

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:

Mr. Stop Spamming Me
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-530-5062

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.