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.

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."

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.

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: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.

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!!

[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.

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.