Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Reminds Users That 'No' Doesn't Mean 'No'
rawg writes "Looks like Yahoo is resetting their 'Marketing Preferences' again. In an email I received from Yahoo today it states, 'Starting January 1, 2004, Yahoo! will begin to send you messages, via email or postal mail, about our own products and services. You can control the types of messages you receive by visiting your Marketing Preferences at any time'. It also states, 'And, as always, you can delete your Yahoo! account altogether at any time, for any reason, by going to the deletion page.' I deleted my Yahoo account a month ago. I guess they are lying, because I'm still getting their SPAM."
After 15 years of marriage I am well aware of "No means No" !
I mind the electronic spam -- my Yahoo! Mail account keeps getting clogged. Don't mind the paper, though, because they're paying the bulk of the cost anyway and I have recycling at home.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Dear Yahoo! Member,
Last year we announced changes that affect how we communicate with Yahoo! members about Yahoo!'s own products and services. However, we have not yet implemented those changes for all our registered members. Because of your previous account settings, Yahoo! has not yet sent you marketing communications under the new program. Before we do, we want to remind you how to set your preferences, and let you know what has changed and what is not changing.
Background Information
Over the years, we've sent emails to some registered Yahoo! members about Yahoo! products and services. We've also delivered promotional messages to Yahoo! members on behalf of our marketing partners. When you first registered with us and created your Yahoo! ID, our system presented a single "Yes" or "No" option for receiving all types of marketing communications. At some point you said "No," and after that we no longer sent any of these types of messages to you.
In March 2002, we began rolling out an updated marketing communications system. Instead of just a single "Yes" or "No" choice, we created a new Marketing Preferences page where you decide:
* whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about our own products and services, and separately, whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about the offerings of our marketing partners;
* whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about certain types of Yahoo! products and services but not others (For example, you can select specific categories such as "Managing personal finances" or "Using Yahoo! for research and surfing the Web," and de-select other categories that might not be of interest to you.);
* whether you want to hear from Yahoo! (or not) by postal mail or telephone, in addition to email.
When this updated system was first announced in March 2002, we told you we'd begin sending you messages about Yahoo! products and services across all categories, even though you had said "No" to messages under the old single choice system. We also told you that you could still say "No" to these messages by visiting your Marketing Preferences. But we did not completely implement this change until now.
What's Changing on January 1, 2004
Starting January 1, 2004, Yahoo! will begin to send you messages, via email or postal mail, about our own products and services. (We will not send you postal mail if you have given us a mailing address and have opted out of contact via postal delivery.) You can control the types of messages you receive by visiting your Marketing Preferences at any time.
What's Not Changing on January 1, 2004
As in the past, you will not be sent messages on behalf of our marketing partners. We will not call you on the telephone to market products or services. If you ever change your mind about any of these choices you can let us know by visiting and updating your Marketing Preferences at any time. Every marketing email you receive from Yahoo! will continue to include instructions for how to unsubscribe from more marketing email. And, as always, you can delete your Yahoo! account altogether at any time, for any reason, by going to the deletion page.
Please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information. We look forward to serving you.
Sincerely,
Yahoo!
There's a link to go to your account preferences.
I'd set mine to "no contact" when the issue came up a while back; it hadn't changed, so I expect I'll see no spam.
I was expecting that they'd have changed them to send me spam, but it was a somewhat pleasant surprise that they hadn't.
Tell your friends to cancel it, don't use Yahoo messenger, don't stop at their webpage, hopefully they will get that point.
Useless sig.
Amusingly enough, though, SpamAssassin filtered it out and it ended up in my spam folder.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
If you don't like it, let them know and take your money somewhere else. If you're not paying for it, then you don't have anything to complain about.
Life in Orange County
Didn't change any of my marketing preferences at all. All still say "no".
Who is still using Yahoo? Its not for their serach engine and I've never cared for or used any of their other services. Can anyone give me just 1 good reason to use yahoo for anything.
Yahoo ignores my preference to not get spammed by them, I ignore all software EULA's that I click through... I think it's a fair trade... :)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The default preferences assume that you want to receive spam. But I'm not complaining, because it is a free service.
I'm sure I'll be called a pocket socialist, but this sort of thing should be regulated. When you opt out there isn't anything that states it's temporary, and when you delete your account there's nothing that says it's not really deleted, only moved to a different bin. Yahoo is lying out it's butt and I for one would like to see some accountability.
Internet portal Yahoo may want to think about changing its advertising slogan from "Do You Yahoo?" to "You DO Yahoo."
More like "Yahoo DO You."
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
I'm going back to using the telegraph and smoke signals.
Are you _sure_ you pressed the hidden "I'm sure" button?
You can mark e-mail as Spam in Yahoo! e-mail. When you do that, you can create a filter or send the e-mail to Yahoo!. Will Yahoo! allow their own homemade spam to be treated the same way? What would happen if everyone sent the spam back to Yahoo!?
The email was a reminder to change your preferences if you don't want to be marketed to. When they changed them to yes (a year ago?) they didn't actually act on the change. Now that people have had a year to reset their preferences, they are going to start marketing.
Not that it doesn't suck, but the article header is wrong. They changed your preferences once, a long time ago.
Ok, rant off.
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
I just sent out a nice little e-mail to Yahoo and one of their upstreams regarding this change in policy reminding them that spamming a military e-mail account (mine) is a very big no-no and that I will gladly persue this with my local OSI officer (Office of Special Investigation) and, as an admin here on a military installation, I'll be happy to block any and all e-mail comming from their domains.
Do I expect them to do anything about it? Certainly not, but I'll still have fun blocking them when they go ahead and start spamming everyone on my base. Where do they get the idea that, because I opted out of ALL of their spam before, I want to receive MORE spam from them now? Why should users have to jump through hoops for these people???
Wait a minute. I got it. You could play with your magic nose goblins.
no really we KNOW you want to say yes, wait you said no??? huh I cant here you it sounded like yes. whats that? you said no you would love to have our spa.. er I mean emails sent to you well you asked for it....
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
They did the same thing when they bought Launch and Hotjobs. Those two companies started to send me spam immediately when Yahoo bought them.
I just don't get how they can make wholesale changes to your preferences (not necessarily the privacy policy). If I say I don't want to be contacted, that doesn't change just because they want it to.
But Yahoo is fairly useless to me these days. Unless I want to play pool or free fantasy sports.
But then again, Yahoo is super shady in other areas. Good luck if you use their web store stuff. Once you are signed up, good luck hearing from them before your ship sinks.
Not that I really like yahoo, I kind of think they suck, but I need easily accessible from anywhere email... but my marketing preferences have not been changed since I set them when they first came out. I've never had a problem with yahoo sending me spam... its everywhere else that sends me spam that I have a problem with. nemui
Yahoo bought eGroups a while back, so those of us who are maintainers of mailing lists that used that free service are kinda stuck with them. There's really not an easier way to get a free mailing list setup that I've found.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Yahoo has some niche discussion groups that are useful. I wish they were not on Yahoo, but I can't change that. I setup a yahoo mail account just so I could sign up for these groups.
Strangely enough, just lakst week I tried to login to my Yahoo mail account and found a message that the mail account had been deleted because I had not logged in for more than 6 months.
The really weird thing is whenever I try to forward
Yahoo generated spam to the Yahoo! spam filtering
system the Yahoo! spam doesn't get deleted and sits
their in my inbox unscathed.
weird.
- Moomin
Kill all those goddammed cocksucking sonovabitches!!!
This doesn't shock me at all. Yahoo has been in the spam business for quite a while now. I've abandoned my mail account because of it, despite the fact that I've clicked that "Do Not Send Me Anything" button. Mail.com is getting just as bad now. I see this as a sign that companies are getting desparate to increase their revenues in any way possible, knowing most people will put up with the BS and a small percentage will buy into it.
Alright, I think I've had about enough. My first e-mail address was from usa.net, who was purchased by netaddress.com. I liked it because it was free, simple, and had pop access. When netaddress purchased it, and a few months later turned it into a pay service, I decided it was time to switch.
After some research, I found that Yahoo had the largest storage size AND pop access at the time. So, I hopped on and singed up.
And now here we are, a few years later. No more pop access, constant attempts to spam me - I think I've about exausted my patience after getting this e-mail from them this morning. So, I guess I'll do a mini Ask-Slashdot for all the peeps using Yahoo:
What E-mail Service do YOU use/recommend?
Or, alternatively, how much of a hastle would it be to just run my OWN mailserver? I've got a box I could do it on, but I'm worried that it'd be a pain keeping spammers from using it for outgoing if it was found (granted, I know nothing about running a mailserver).
Anyway, for myself and all those like me, suggestions?
The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
Why does YAHOO! get such a bad rap from Slashdot? They run almost all of their services on FreeBSD and are a huge advocate, supporter, and patron of the FreeBSD foundation. Why does the majority of Slashdotters despise them?
Hasn't everyone stopped doing business with Yahoo yet?
When my email box was full of spam that they basically wouldn't do anything about, I terminated my account with extreme prejudice. Sure, the wallet was handy for buying phone cards and for dealing with my favorite Taiwanese reseller of motherboards, but I can type in my credit card number rather than deal with their boatloads of spam.
The thing I hate about Yahoo, most of all, is that they make it as difficult as possible to find a customer service contact. Any business that doesn't give a shit about its customers is doomed ultimately - Yahoo is pretty much headed that way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
wonder if that could work ..hmmmmmmmmmm ;-)
Peoples Mums and Dads,
Peoples Aunts and Uncles,
Clueless PHB's and Office Clerks.
Loads of people use it, that much is obvious there are other people in the world apart from clever techies like you and me!
Anyhow your message was clearly flamebait and I took it hook, line and sinker!
nick .
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Annon coward because I fear the wrath of the same stupid mods that moded the parent down.
Set your email prefs... I have mine as alerts-feedback@yahoo-inc.com - this way, they spam their own inbox...
Note that you will need to add the address as an "alternate email address" for it to be available in the selection box.
How may we contact you?
Please verify your contact information. It will only be used consistent with the Yahoo! Privacy Policy and your preferences. Please note that Yahoo!'s ability to accurately honor your choices above, including a preference not to receive certain types of communications, depends on up-to-date addresses and phone numbers in your Account Information. If your Account Information is no longer current, please edit or update using the links below.
Email - please select which address we should send email to:
alerts-feedback@yahoo-inc.com
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I still receive spam from Yahoo under an account name I deleted several years ago. The email informs me that I may login under the userid listed in the email and change my preferences. When I go to login, it tells me that the account doesn't exist and asks if I would like to sign up under that name.
Since Yahoo spams tend to be more legitimate than the usual penis extension mailings, I find that I feel better after going to the advertisers website, making a list of all the email addresses, and writing to them to inform them that I will be signing up for free pencams, PDAs drawings, and porn-a-day lists.
This does remind me of when the cable companies up here in Ontario tried to get away with negative billing - "if you don't want us to give you these new channels and charge us extra for it, you have to tell us not to." I wonder if there will be a similar backlash...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
There's a reason I register for everything with a throwaway email address. My hotmail account is whitelisted. If there's a registration email that I need to see, I can check the junk senders folder.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
girl that everybody liked. But she told you "No" and you wondered if "No" really meant "Yes" afterall.
But her parents had to call your parents to clarify that "No" really meant "No" for really positive for sure.
It's like that.
Maybe it was just me.....
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
just redo your account settings with their address, and their corporate phone number. make sure you say you want mail and phone contact from both them and their marketing partners. that way they'll mail themselves and call themselves and you won't get any of it.
go one further, set your alternate email address as abuse@yahoo.com and then make it default. their spam will go to their own abuse center. after all, we all use free webmail accounts just to collect spam, right? so who cares what gets sent to them!
They're not resetting your preferences, just reminding you to check them. And if you had checked them instead of running to Slashdot, you'd see that they're still the same. They just aren't going to start using those preferences until next year.
I'm not sure this is such a huge deal. What happened was back in March of 2002, Yahoo! created a whole new set of opt-out options with the intention of driving their marketing emails based off of those. The bad was, however, that they defaulted everyone to receive emails from every category. A scandal broke, please see: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/29/1833235.shtm l?tid=111 for more details on that scandal.
Yahoo apparantly decided they weren't going to start sending mail based on those new preferences for a while. They've decided recently, though, that that policy is going to change.
So anyone who did reset their preferences back in 2002 is safe. I know when I went in, my preferences were just the way I had them.
That said, its still odd that they defaulted everyone to 'yes'. And that shopping from a Yahoo! merchant will get your mailing address onto that form.
I forget exactly, but it looks like the big change is that they changed the option from a single Yes/No option to multiple, categorized Yes/No option quite some time ago, and are just now implementing the change. Furthermore, one of the categories is for the Yahoo messages, so it still looks like you can opt-out of it.
Spam [*] is unsolicited commercial/bulk email. This is not unsolicted, as you're using the Yahoo service to begin with.
[*] A gentle reminder: it's "spam" not "SPAM" . I don't know why people keep thinking it's an acryonym.
For free, you get:
All of this for 0 USD a month, and now they're suggesting that they may "clear" your nospam preferences, unless you turn it back on again.
How is this evil? I've had a Yahoo profile since 1997, its been invaluable. Heck, I feel guilty not paying them a dime!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
As I understand it, if you hadn't yet opted out, they plan to start emailing next year. (This explains why I haven't had any travel offers yet.) You've had at least SIX MONTHS to opt out, so don't start whining now. For a free service, this seems perfectly fair to me. If you don't like it, don't use their services.
How do you delete an account?
I have never really had any problems or annoyances with any accounts through Yahoo, except one thing:
Trying to get off of something.
Not too long ago, I tried to get taken off of a newsgroup, and couldn't, because it said I wasn't subscribed. It was maddening, because I was getting these emails from a newsgroup I had subscribed to, and when I went to remove myself, it said I needed to subscribe first to unsubscribe myself. WTF?
Now I can't seem to figure out how to delete my account. Navigating the account options is insanity-inducing.
I get Yahoo's spam at a MindSpring email account.
Yahoo requires you to sign in to your Yahoo account in order to delete that account. Since I don't know what username or password or birthdate they have on file for me, it is impossible for me to sign in and impossible to cancel the spam or delete the account. It is also impossible to contact a live human at Yahoo regarding this problem.
The design is thoroughly irresponsible, yet they've had it this way for years.
If I see that damn pop up again that tells me to reconfigure my browser to all thing Yahoo, I swear I'm going to do something. I don't know what...maybe shake my fist menacingly at the screen or something else. What I do know is Yahoo blows.
This is an easy fix. Just reject email from yahoo.com
I'm not sure about postfix or sendmail but I know that with qmail it will bounce the message back saying that the email was rejected because the address appears in the badmailfrom file.
I keep multiple accounts and use Yahoo for stuff on the internet where you have to enter your email and you KNOW they're just kidding about "privacy."
/. and I'm very happy /. hasn't offered my any "marketing preferences."
In fact, I used it to sign up for
Heh... considering on the two or three accounts with Yahoo I created, I always set my address to be someplace in Albania or some even more out of the way place, I suspect Yahoo will opt-out of sending my accounts snail mail spam on their own.
Silly Yahoo, real addresses are for lusers.
I got this e-mail as well, and it handily had a link that said "this e-mail address is not associate with a yahoo account." When Yahoo started their whole "Oh, we're gonna change your 'marketing preferences' for you because we know better' bullshit, I scrambled the info in my main Yahoo account, since I couldn't delete it. (I couldn't delete it because Yahoo claimed my account's password too short for their current standards, and their software couldn't change the password after they upped the minimum number of characters required). So, now that account will be free of Yahoo spam, as well.
The two worst cases for me are Canon, which sends me new product notifications once a month and has an opt-out link on the bottom of every email which seems to do nothing and ACDSee, which makes nice software but pretty much has ignored all my opt-outs.
I have my own domain and create a new address for every vendor so it's easy enough to turn off messages from sites that fail to follow their own privacy guidelines. If you don't respect my wishes, all of your emails are ignored.
Their e-mail to me got trapped by my spam filter.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You forward the spam to slashdot and get +5 informative? Mod this spam down. If you use yahoo you'll see the message. No need to repeat their marketing here, please.
Where is the freakin' delete page????
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Unlike so many services out there and I have to respect them a bit for that. Personally, I pay for my access to Yahoo. The calendar, notepad, bookmark, etc features are just so valuable to me that I felt I should give them something back. Especially since I discovered their Palm sync software. Very handy. I know a lot of people have bad blood with them but some of us find them extremely valuable and enjoy the convience of their portal. It may not be open source or non-commercial, but that doesn't automaticlly mean they are abhorrently evil. =)
YMMV of course...
Mine haven't changed. Maybe this is only for people who never adjusted the marketing preference page with 20 dozen options ?
Finally, at least SOMEBODY here is talking some sense!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are now making a butt load of money via selling the spam. The funny thing is that MSN and AOL actually use their own client's IP and logins to make it look like an infected system is causing it (Infections cause a lot as well). In one case that I know of, a spam company approached a very large DSL-based isp and wanted to pay them 2 million/month to use their lines to do the same. Apparently, MSN was upping the charge to 5Million to do the same amount.
There is a lot of humour in hearing Bill Gates, Yahoo and AOL CEO complain about spam while they are busy spamming each other and making a killing at it.
I deleted my Yahoo account a month ago
If you deleted your account how are you getting your deleted accounts mail?
I have or at least I should still have a yahoo account but I didn't get any Spam really because I never check the account. It's a "if a tree falls in the woods" type of thing.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
The hotmail filters refuse to block email from hotmail staff, so good luck...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I checked my set preferences and they're still NO for everything. Do they change automatically in 60 days or something? Requiring me to THEN adjust them to NO again? or do they only reset for some people, or are people getting confused by that email, and that their preferences aren't really changed?
+1 Informative
-1 Flamebait
I'll let the mods fight it out
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And if you don't subscribe to yahoo, you'll have no idea what's going on- I prefer to see the message.
A very clever enemy who knows that we don't have the best intelligence in the world
-- Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations
Good summary on the Iraqi and the Americans. Certainly, IQ of the Americans is far from the best.
... that fucking 'Marketing Preferences' link. I click it on the email. For the first Yahoo email account I use, it works fine, I can edit it (it defaults to receive SPAM from Yahoo, by email or postal). Then for the second account, when I receive the email, and click 'Marketing Preferences' in that email, it ask me to login again and I can't find that stupid 'Marketing Preferences' link.
I accidentally modded parent redundant, so I'm posting here to counteract that....sorry
The Wired article linked to is from 2002. Maybe they're finally going to start spamming/calling/junkmailing people after giving them almost two years' notice. I think that's awfully nice of them.
I just checked and everything I clicked "No" on back in 2002 is still there. I think the headline is wrong and misleading. I've never gotten any spam from them both before and after I set my preferences.
I tried the transition, but I found that I had grown too accustomed to Yahoo. So I guess I"m stuck.
I deleted my Yahoo! account yesterday when they sent me the e-mail. I promptly deleted my account and was led to a page that says it takes them 90 days to delete an account, in the meantime I may still get promotional materials. Now I can't even access my account (disabled) to change the preferences if I wanted to!
So it's okay for them to give us 40 days notice that they're changing their policy, but it takes 90 days to get out of it?
This is like, what, the third time they've pulled this garbage since buying egroups? They've proven the dollar is mightier than their respect for your privacy. How long do you really think it will be before they start selling their lists outright to spammers, mass postal mailers, and (gasp) telemarketers?
I actually love getting all the credit card applications. They, along with any other spam snail mail which includes a "no postage necessary" envelope, are a convient way to recycle. I strip off any identification marks on the ads which may let them trace to my address and stuff them full of all the other garbage that comes to my address and send it back to them. If I could find thin lead bars to fit in the envelope, that would be more fun but at least this way my recycling bin is nearly empty.
I think yahoo mail is great. I've never gotten an ounce of spam from them. Once a year or so I go check my marketing preferences. In fact, when I got that email, I found that all of my marketing preferences were still EXACTLY as I had left them - all "no". It's funny how people bitch about having to check marketing preferences so they don't get spam, but when those preferences aren't even offered, we hear nothing. Go sign up for a hotmail acct and see how much spam you get. Even when you turn off their "marketing preferences", you still get messages from them about once a month. Not to mention they don't have any spam filtering. Or a calendar. Or that nifty notepad.
I pay for an upgraded version of Yahoo mail and I still got the message.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
see, just by signing up with them, they have something they can monitize - my information.
Instead of saying, to be able to get free email, free gmaes, free claendars, music, ect you must allow for us to market to you, they think its ok to just change their word (word is SUPPOSED to be bond). But tell me that and don't tell me you wont sell my information and the DO IT!
I don't know about you, but I take it personally when someone tells me one thing and does another.
My real email accounts have been spam free since 2000.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Yahoo is lying out it's butt and I for one would like to see some accountability.
I, for one, would welcome our accountability overloads.
This space for rent.
didn't thins so, so stfu.
If you're using Yahoo!, you have no recourse for complaint regarding email you receive from them. Don't like it? Go somewhere else (I hear MSN and AOL are accepting users). The part that I don't like is that they don't allow me to pay to not receive these emails. I am willing to pay a nominal subscription fee to maintain my account at Yahoo!, without requiring that I be sent any emails. Yahoo! Please, let me pay you for my subscription!
This is the Dad of the girl.
....and no still means no....
Its not just you, EVERYONE likes her.
If you play with it you can get it to catch it, this seems to work for me, and it gets tossed into the junk mail folder.
Deliver mail that contains staff@hotmail.com in the from addr to my Junk Mail folder.
Deliver mail that contains staff@hotmail.com in the from name to my Junk Mail folder.
...where apparently "no" means "Ask me again and I'll have the bouncer throw you out of here." Who would've thought?
Higher than yours, gene trash.
how about hotmail continously spamming its users and there's no way to block or unsubscribe their mail in any way.
my blog
Thus, I have paid for my yahoo account, by giving them my travel business, and I am not happy about getting spammed because of it, or having to endlessly reset my preferences. I'm now purchasing tickets from another source. I'll close the account entirely once I've copied out a few old emails.
Putting linux on a girl's computer without her consent is a bad rap for the open source movement. Educate her, yes, but forcing her to switch after she said no is bad karma.
Wait... we're talking about linux, right?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
If you don't like it, let them know and take your money somewhere else. If you're not paying for it, then you don't have anything to complain about.
Bullshit. Zero cost does not give someone license to behave in a despicable manner. If someone offered a free cleaning service for your home or office and then used their access to rape your spouse, you would be perfectly in your rights to complain bitterly and have them arrested (hell, if you catch them in the act, you have the right to shoot them dead in most states, and rightly so). If someone offered a free food service and fed you bad food that put you in the hospital, you could bring them up on charges of violating safe food laws, and sue for civil damages.
Someone offering a free web service or free email service does not entitle them to no complaints when they use that service to abuse their customers. SPAM, by any sensible definition, is abuse, and while it may not be as abusive as, say, rape or contaminated food, it is abuse nevertheless.
What is really appalling is how Yahoo abuses the resources of others. This isn't SPAM going to yahoo mailboxes exclusively (or even mostly), it is SPAM going to everyone who ever used their online clubs, whoever browsed a web page they required one to register for (clubs, etc.) even in passing...most of whome pay for email service, storage, and bandwidth elsewhere, only to have it abused by Yahoo (and, of course, other similiar low lifes peddling Penis extentions, Viagra, child pornography, and bulk mailing software).
Worse, most of these people signed up and made their preferences known, and were offered the "service" under those conditions and that understanding. Yahoo is once again, retroactively, changing their side of the bargain, and doing so at the financial expense of the recipients.
They deserve to be treated no differently than any other spammer, free service or no.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There are a lot of things that mean "No" in a marriage...
10. "No,"
9. "Maybe,"
8. "I have a headache,"
7. "It's that time of the month,"
6. "It's your turn to change diapers,"
5. "My mother's coming to the house tomorrow,"
4. "Did you take out the trash?,"
3. "I just want to cuddle,"
2. "Could you give me a backrub?,"
1. "Yeah, that's what we need, another kid,"
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No, not doing anything makes you whiny.
Guess you don't have any principles then, do you?
Yahoo: We reserve the right to change the way we contact you as part of the services we provide.
Member: You reserve the right to wine and moan that the free service you are receiving is overpriced.
Me: I feel bad for the peole who pay for Yahoo services.
Are the voices in my head bothering you?
DO NOT marry. Ever.
Thank God I didn't have kids.
I had a yahoo account from years back. I had SBC DSL from years back. One day SBC asked me to upgrade to Yahoo DSL, and game me some perks to do so. So I did. It asked if I'd like to merge my old yahoo acount with the new SBC/Yahoo DSL account? Sure I said. 6 months later I switch to another DSL provider. My Yahoo account is no longer available, they want $9.99/month to access my yahoo account, they will not relase it. Funny, I can create a new account for free, but I cannot use my old account unless I pay, almost like extrortion, yes?
Funny, I put all my legitimate information in my Yahoo! account and never once have received a piece of spam, junk snail mail, or phone call. I'm very pleased with Yahoo!. I find most spam "fanatics" don't know what they are talking about and have made an error on their part to receive said SPAM.
All's fair in love and war, eh?
Then I noticed that my email address in the preferences was my "safe" address. The one where I never get spam. So I changed it to my "send all spam here" email and clicked save.
Then I went back to the first page ane guess what? All the "Send me spam" opt in choices were reset to YES again. Well that sux. I changed it back to NO NO NO NO NO NO NO and Fsck No! and clicked Save again. I hope it decided that No means No this time. But resetting to a default of YES when I changed something else seems pretty sleezy.
I got that email Wednesday... completely forgot about it! Anyway, this is what they just told me after changing my marketing prefs:
"Thank you, your changes have been saved. Please allow approximately 5 days for this change to take effect."
That must be a very slow database they use....
No. They just make you work for it.
I had this problem a long time ago. I would get a spam letter from Yahoo! with a link for removal. Of course you never click on those, but this is Yahoo, a more or less legitimate business. I found that clicking on the link and filling out the form or whatever didn't work. It didn't work the first time, and it didn't work the n-1th time.
That nth time came one day at work. I clicked the removal link, and something about the URL struck me as odd. It was so long ago, I unfortunately can't tell you what so you can do the same. But I changed that thing, and it went to *another*, different removal page.
This one worked. It actually worked.
The moral of the story is: look at that URL. Unless they changed the procedure since, of course. I wouldn't know, because I haven't gotten a message from them until this heads-up from the marketing department.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
This seems to work fine for me.
What's under yellowstone?
It's really simple:
Yahoo needs revenue to maintain Wall Street expectations.
The quickest way to gain revenue is by advertising. I.E. selling subscriber email addresses to "marketing partners."
Everyone does it. AOL did it. Then the partner "sells" those email addresses, or some employee takes them home on disc, sells them to spammers, and that's it. I'm actually surprised that Yahoo told the users to indicate they will be changing.
I suppose that they don't want a ton of angry emails from the users. After they realize how many users will leave, they'll try to put a stop to it by making bold announcements to the press, but the cat will be out of the bag. Nothing changes... you can't offer too much free stuff and expect to stay in business unless you've got the best product with the best services.
-- No sig for you!
This isn't an intentional troll but want someone to explain...
.... I would be upset my account wasn't deleted, not at the fact that it exists and is getting spam.
I deleted my Yahoo account a month ago. I guess they are lying, because I'm still getting their SPAM."
How is he getting Yahoo e-mailed his Yahoo account if he deleted it.... and if he deleted an account, why is he attempting to use it
Regarding analyst's recomendations: Buy and sell only means buy and sell if you are an insider. For common shareholders, Buy means Sell and Sell means Buy. The reason they want you to buy, is 'cause they want to sell...
A bullet can be had for free in your local 'hood. Would you complain about a "free" service?
I have a Yahoo account because I manage a couple of different listservs through their site, but I never use my yahoo.com e-mail address. It's a spam bucket, so that's where I have Yahoo send their marketing materials.
Still... this bothers me. At least there's some accountability, though; you can complain about Yahoo spam to a cusomter service rep, even if they won't do anything about it.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
At the end of the email they sent me, it read:
:-)
"... This is a service email related to your use of Yahoo!. This email was sent to ___@xxx.xxx for the Yahoo! ID ___. If this ID doesn't belong to you, click here."
So I clicked on the link provided and they now think they have the wrong person and will never bother me again.
-- Boycott Shell
"deleting" your account isn't accurate. they render it 'inactive', but it's still there, hogging the use of the name amongst other things.. for eternity (or at least 2 years)
1 & 1 Internet Inc. is offering three years free on their hosting plans. Domains are ~$5 a year.
Buying a domain and hosting plan has been the most flexible and powerful solution I've found to spam problems.
Yes, and I saw her last week. It turns out she likes girls more than boys.
-- Boycott Shell
Just how bad are you? I've actually dated a lesbian and taken her away from her girfriend! She thought it was great. She gets the tongue and the dick.
Guys, learn to use your tongue or risk losing your lady. And be nice, for God's sake. Women are not just physically different from us. They need attention and tenderness, not just a dick ramming in and out. Remember that foreplay is a 24/7/365 job.
There was like four links to their preferences page in the e-mail, and it was very clearly worded.
What do you really expect?!? Yahoo! is a free service!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I'm going to stab you with my large and rusty knife, free of charge!
And I better not catch you complaining, either.
So you got lucky, then?
In response to the original poster: Yahoo isn't lying, you deleted your account, so they can not determine your preferences so must assume you want to receive their email!
In response to the person who wanted to know what the best free email service is: I'd say Yahoo!
I love it. I used to use Netscape's free email when it had filters enabled. But since they removed that functionality and email address aliases, that account has become my sacrifice account. Everything that needs an email address gets that one (even Slashdot!)
I prefer Yahoo's service since it has spam blocking virus scanning for attachments, and aliases in the address book.
I did not recieve this message from Yahoo (yet) but then I have all my preferences set to do not contact. I do not have an alternate email set for them to see. I never see spam from Yahoo, ever.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Seriously, POPfile nabbed it and just pulled it out of my spam can. I would have missed it otherwise. Most all of my Yahoo/SBCdsl is so loaded with advertising that I miss things like service annoncements, billing, etc...
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I wonder if you are getting postal spam from yahoo? If so then just give them a false address. It is really strange that you give your email to an online merchant when placing an order, and they just think it is their father's property.
and NOT use yahoo. they clearly suck.
just get your own domain and hosting. its cheap as dirt nowadays.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
It's times like this that I'm glad I gave a fake name and address. Some post office in Beverly Hills (chosen for its easily-remembered zipcode) is probably choking on a huge pile of undeliverable junk mail addressed to Haywood Jabloughmi. :)
Quite simple really - Data Protection Act 1998 quite clearly allows you to stop Yahoo from direct marketing. It also allows you penalties for non-compliance. Obviously doesn't apply to Federal Socialist countries like the USA where big business and big goverment control all aspects of your lives. The day you can get a beer without showing ID is the day you can say you are free.
I used to have a Yahoo! account with the account ID "nospamever_assholes". I asked them to close it. They said it was closed, but now they're spamming the address it forwarded to.
But since I tossed all the account info, I can't log in to set my prefs back, and they refuse to close it for me.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Spam is the main reason I scored an old box from work and set it up as a mail / web server.
There'e nothing more satisfying than watching the mail logs when spammers are being defeated by spamassassin / mimedefang. I'm starting to get friends and family sign up, partly because of the spam & virus filtering, partly because they can switch ISPs and not email addresses ( the main reason people use web mail, I think ), and partly because I offer IMAP over SSL access ( the other reason people use web mail - access from anywhere you can get on the net ).
I have honestly never had such a spam-free experience. It's well worth it...
I know that privacy seal programs suck, but how can Truste pass off on this? I say that we all file complaints with Truste and force them to do something.
http://www.truste.org/
I dumped Yahoo after I set up an XMail.net account, 20MB mailbox and 20MB web space for free. I particularly like the whitelist feature that blocks 99.9% of spam. They also offer free VOIP but I haven't used it yet.
It may be unusual, but I've had a Yahoo account for years and NEVER receieved any spam until they changed to their "Bulk Mail" folder system a short time ago. Now the spam just sits there and erases itself, so no big deal.
But I also received the policy change, checked my preferences, and found that ALL of them were STILL checked as "No" They made me look, but I didn't have to do anything but confirm everything was still set to "No"
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I have never at any point opted *in* to receive marketing info from Yahoo. I opted out via all mechanisms available to me at the time I signed up.
Therefore, if Yahoo start sending me marketing messages via e-mail, it is spam. I don't care that they're Yahoo, I don't care if they're giving me a working opt-out link; "spamming with opt-out links" is no more acceptable than any other kind. I will treat them like any other spammer.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Even Kobe know that "No" doesnt really mean "No"!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I don't know if this will work in the long run but the
email we got did not come from yahoo.com.
Looking at the headers it came from "dms.netcenter.com" . "dms.netcenter.com"
is now on my sendmail access REJECT list.
I can still access yahoo.com . Doing a dig on
dms.netcenter.com gives an owner of Netscape...
How the mighty have fallen.
Mike
The preferences are not the same. They've added a bunch of checkboxes saying that I've agreed to receive spam in a dozen different categories. That is simply not true. Those checkboxes were never there when I signed up; I set my preferences on sign up not to receive spam from them.
Spamming someone does not suddenly become acceptable simply because you give people a way to opt out.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I heartily recommend both of these, Hotmail Popper from personal experience, and Yahoo POPs from others'.
They are going to get sued. Many times. At $1000 per spam.
email forums has plenty of information about other email providers as well.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
I also received that email in my hotmail account. Funny, because I've never given that address to yahoo! I also received that fake paypal email the other week, and the links both go to the same place: 65.54.246.250... interesting. I'm assuming it's from a real spammer, trying to get peoples yahoo passwords when they log in?? I get so much spam in my hotmail account and I'm very careful about who I give my email address to. Yahoo spam filtering works so much better!!
been from the alt.yahoo.opt-out.opt-out.opt-out dept.
I agree 100%, Trust me on this. Trust Me!!!
this is all the bulk servers yahoo uses to spam. Block em and you wont have to worry about their spammy crap again, but it wont block legit email from them.
66.218.73.32/27
216.136.172.244
216.136.172.247
66.218.69.17
66.218.69.14
216.136.172.246
216.136.173.191
66.218.69.16
66.218.69.27
66.218.69.21
216.136.172.243
216.136.172.241/28
66.218.69.5
66.218.69.2
mailer7.bulk.scd.yahoo.com
mailer4.bulk.scd.yahoo.com
mailer2.bulk.scd.yahoo.com
qmail1.bulk.yahoo.com
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Yahoo recently implemented DEAs (disposable email addresses) for their premium (paid) service. It's supposed to protect you from spam by allowing you to keep from giving out your personal email address. Who keeps Yahoo from sending you spam?
Yahoo is seemingly as bad as the rest, and maybe worse. Do they eat their own dogfood and promise to contact you only via the DEA that you give them? (I doubt it.)
Who are these people that think this is really what the customer wants? Yeah, yeah, I know...it's what they want that really counts: money.
I got an actual phone number.
Call Yahoo! at 408-349-3300 if you want to talk to a real person.
Since it's a toll call, I'm posting a partial map of the voice mail system.
Extension 2 for Yahoo! customer support, then option 2 for customer support. This will tell you to use the web page for free support. They don't want you to talk to a real person. Sub-option 5 (report abuse) tells you to send email, and does not let you talk to a real person. Sub-option 4 puts you on hold with a recorded message saying "Prodigy values your membership. Please hold for the next available agent." I've now been on hold for maybe 15 minutes with this... This is a bad option if it doesn't get you to the right person. I hung up and tried again... This time it worked.
They will not close an account for you. If someone has created an account which forwards to you, but you don't have all the personal information, there is nothing you can do. They don't care.
Also, they claim that this account was created in September of this year - actually, it wasn't, it was created a long time ago to sign up for a Yahoo! group, around 2001. So, they're recreating old accounts!
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Yes, yes, he understands! Do all the poor emotionally stunted /.ers a favor and mod this guy's post up.
Yahoo blows
-1 Obvious
...to the divorce.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
That's SS A N, you buffoon!
Yes, there actually is a mystical, bountiful retirement account out there... with your name on it! *misty-eyed, far-off look*
... as much as Yahoo presures people... it's sexual harassment.
;-)
Ya-ho.... oooh.... oooh... ahh... oh... uh....wow.
I have accounts that have been dead for at least 4 years. My system is older than that, but I don't have logs of exactly when some of these guys got deleted before 2000. Yahoo has been mailing a bunch of my long-time dead accounts this week.
In the old days, I used to just shrug off the user unknown errors. In this modern age, those accounts are now all spam traps. Yahoo is getting their outgoing mail servers blocked from mailing me, and I don't have to lift a finger.
Just how many 5xx errors do they need to see?
I signed up for a Yahoo account long ago. I tied it in with a yahoo email account, then cancelled the email account. For years now I've had access to all the Yahoo features and clubs with nary an email. When I sign up for clubs, it still thinks I have a @yahoo.com account. I just read the messages on the site.
If I check a box in my Yahoo profile which asks me to state that I don't want to receive any communication from Yahoo, and then they go ahead and send me a communication, they are essentially violating their own agreement, and I would say that automatically qualifies this communication as spam. In which case Yahoo would be violating the law on a grand scale by sending out millions of UNSOLICITED emails. Oce could even argue that it is somehow worse than unsolicited, if there is such a thing, because I EXPLICITLY told them that I did not want to recieve any communication from them! How much clearer can you be?
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
"I deleted my Yahoo account a month ago. I guess they are lying, because I'm still getting their SPAM."
My only question is, how does he know it's Yahoo's spam out of all the other spammers out there?
If it's this bad to you, you two need to sit down. You may even want to consider a marriage counselor.
Some women, especially those brought up in conservative households have guilt issues with having sex for fun. If this is the case, she needs to seek counseling to deal with the guilt.
If this is not the case, there may be other things that are worrying her or stressing her out that are affecting her sex drive. Stress is the biggest turn-off period. Sit down with her and talk about your sex-life when you aren't feeling aggressive and/or horny and be sure to let her know that you're not being threatening -- you are not mad at her nor dissappointed in her (even if you are, try to let it go for this talk, because she needs the understanding when put in this position).
Sometimes it may be that the general things just don't work on her (like touching, caressing), and she's turned on by something else. Or it may be that she has worries and stressors that you don't know about but can help her with if she tells you about them.
That's the best advice I can give you over the slashdot commentary. Good luck with you and your wife, and I hope you pull through this.
And before you start sleeping around. Talk to her about that too. I'm not here to judge what limits people have on thier marriage. She may be fine with you doing it with certain constraints, and you should know and abide by those if they exist. Sex may be just another activity to her and she may not consider extramarital sex as a breach of trust, so talk to her about it, if you see this as the only solution.
'And, as always, you can delete your Yahoo! account altogether at any time, for any reason, by going to the deletion page.' I deleted my Yahoo account a month ago. I guess they are lying, because I'm still getting their SPAM."
you must not have read the simple solution to the problem you are complaining of.
"To stop receiving emails regarding your deleted account, just log in and change your preferences to reflect this..."
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It will be hilarious to see someone getting $2M from Yahoo because Yahoo spammed their own yahoo account that was on the FTC's Do-Not-SPAM list.
What's the big deal? All you have to do is click on the little "Marketing Preferences' hyperlink in the email that they sent you and click "No" to each category. It took all of 15 seconds.
Christ you degenerate freeloaders. It's not like you're paying anything for yahoo email service as it is. What a bunch of whiners.
That's what I did, having gone round and round those pages looking in vain for a "delete this account AGAIN" checkbox or button (I got a confirmed delete back when I stopped moderating maillists there a few years back, but hey, Halloween wasn't so long ago, it must've risen from the grave or something).
They can now send all the spam they like to the new address: uce@ftc.gov
Depression affects 70% of women at some time in their lives. It is perfectly treatable with non-addictive medicines and therapy. Depression has been thought to be a leading cause in divorce.
Please read this site depression.org and try to watch for these symptoms. If they fit, you two need to have a talk. You may be doing her the biggest favor of her life.
Guilt is a primary feeling in depression, so if you suspect she is, you HAVE to make sure to not make her feel guilty about being so when you bring up the subject. It's not her fault. It's not your fault. If depression is the case, let her know that you love her, are there to help her, that she is not crazy, that you do not think less of her and that there is help for her -- these are all things that she will be feeling.
Once again, good luck
At least Yahoo was nice enough to let you know when they're going to start spamming, and to remind you to check to make sure you've selected all 70001 of the "no" radio buttons. At least they didn't change their policy or your preferences without telling you.
Automatically killing anyone who sends you an e-mail mentioning "marketing communications" (insert other euphemisms for spam here) is probably not a good reflex. Some of them, like Yahoo!, might actually have some ethics.
Merging merchant info with the yahoo email info?
I wasn't aware that yahoo execs are the slimeball lowlifes in the same class as penis enlargement spammers and 419 scammers.
Thanks for the heads up. I won't be using yahoo for anything anymore, and yahoo merchants won't be getting any of my business anymore.
In the Bay Area, they market SBC/Yahoo! DSL as 'The Internet that logs on to YOU!'.
Creepy enough for me to stick with Speakeasy, thank you very much.
... you can't set the spam prefs until after you create an account, they start on, and changes take 90 days to take effect. But they say, we don't spam, you got this because you agreed to it. Bastards.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Someone should setup 1,000,000,000 Yahoo accounts that use 1,000,000,000 different Hotmail accounts as their email on record. And then do the same in the reverse.
And then to be nice, set them all to not send all this junk. It won't become a problem until Yahoo or Microsoft make it a problem.
So all yahoo has is my yahoo email address which they know anyway (the one I signed up with was on usa.net which went TU), and I looked at the marketing preferences which were all set to 'no' as in don't send it; and I freely admit I lied like a rug when they asked me for my physical address and stuff like that as I lie to everyone about my physical address and stuff like that.
It is the initial loss of control of your information that you should worry about. Subsequent changes are to be expected. Just lie, and maintain a throwaway email account.
Years and years ago I had a Geocities web site. When Yahoo aquired Geocities, they forced all current account holders to agree to new terms of service. The new terms were presented to you first thing when you logged in. In short, to be in compliance with Yahoo's new TOS, you would have to waive all rights to the content on your website, and allow Yahoo to use it for any purpose they saw fit.
;)
This TOS did not have an "I do Not Agree" checkbox. You couldn't delete your site without agreeing. In order to ever access your webspace or files again, you were forced to comply with the new TOS and give Yahoo rights to your content.
So.. am I surprised at Yahoo ignoring users email preferences and sending spam? Hell no. They're a shifty, no good business that think providing "free" services allows them to abuse their users. As far as I'm concerned, they're worse than MS.
Oh, and I never agreed to Yahoo's TOS.. so the content is still legally mine. They still haven't deleted the website.. maybe they're hoping I'll break one day.
Yahoo! 'Personals' rip-off...this is the tip of the iceberg! They're ripping off hundreds, maybe thousands of people this way!
Last December (2002) I signed up for the Yahoo Personals "30-Day Trial". I thought it would be a neat way to meet people with common interests. Little did I know that this so-called "Trial" would cost me more than $200.00 *and still counting*, in spite of *numerous* attempts to cancel my subscription.
My problem begins with Yahoo's 'opt out' policy (cleverly hidden in the small print of their "Free Trial" offers) is an "opt-out" policy. If one doesn't go in and actively cancel a subscription after the free trial period expires, Yahoo! continues to bill your card. This is a clever (slimy?) way to nickel-and-dime consumers who are either ignorant of this becoming-all-too-common-marketing-tactic, or not accustomed to reading fine print.
However, this is where it just starts to get interesting.
After using the service for a few weeks, I decided it wasn't worth the money, and having given Yahoo! my credit card number, figured that as long as I didn't go in to "cancel" a subscription (that I was not even aware that I had made), I would *not* continue to be charged $19.95 per month for the service. How wrong I was.
A few months later I noticed that Yahoo! had continued to charge my credit card. I called them to ask for a cancellation. They wanted me to provide them with a password (long since forgotten, this was a trial offer, after all - and I hadn't used the service in months). Having forgotten my password, Yahoo! asked for personal information (ZIP and date of birth).
When I signed up for the trial, I had purposely not given Yahoo accurate 'personal' information because I didn't want to be "marketed to", whether or not I chose to keep the service. This is common practice by consumers who don't want to be bothered by email spam.
Also, in the interim between the time of my original subscription and the time I noticed the unexpected charges, my bank (BofA)had issued a new bank card with a new expiration date (the acct.# remained the same, however).
Thus, at every point I was frustrated by not having the necessary information to cancel my account.
So, I called my bank...the Bank of America.
I told BofA of my plight, and the customer service rep there set up a 3-way call among himself, Yahoo!, and me.
The BofA rep guaranteed the Yahoo customer service rep that I was indeed who I said I was, but Yahoo! refused to cancel my account. They said that the only way they would cancel my account was to have BofA put a block on my card payments to Yahoo!, and send an additional request to Yahoo! for a refund (which Yahoo! denied, by-the way).
I also pleaded with a Yahoo supervisor to reverse this policy, but to no avail.
BofA complied with the Yahoo! request to put a block on my card for further payments to Yahoo!. Guess what? Yahoo! continued to charge my bank card.
For the second time, I complained to BofA. The customer service rep (BofA) said had seen this happen before, and was appalled at the number of hoops that Yahoo! was putting me through just to cancel my account.
So, BofA again put a block on my account for any payment to Yahoo!, and again Yahoo! continued to charge me.
Today (11/15), I called BofA for the third time. hey told me that because I had given Yahoo! my check card number (a check card is commonly offered to vendors as a means to payment), instead of a conventional credit card # (even though a check card is often used as a credit card for online and other payments) that Yahoo! had a way to circumvent the BofA block, and continue to charge my card. BofA said that the only way that I could be assured of relief would be to cancel my bank card, and have a new one issued. However, BofA warned me that if Yahoo! persisted, they would even be able to continue to charge the new bank card.
The BofA supervisor said that she thought this practice was reprehensible, but tha
If you delete your yahoo account and you were silly/stupid/drunk enough to set up a geocities website, make sure you delete that web content first.
If you're like me, you give yahoo fake information on your account, so after I deleted my account, I could not get yahoo to delete my geocities webpage, nor re-instate my account.
I finally got action by contacting the "copyright violations" people. I told them that that content was mine and that I no longer wanted it on their site. They took it right down! It's hard to believe that was yahoo!
So, don't forget those co-branded services when deleting your yahoo account.
I contacted their customer service (support@hotjobs.com (my beef was with HotJobs, but after they joined Yahoo!) every single time it happened detailing, at great length and aggrivation, my situation as well as contents of the messages and past case numbers (so they could follow the trail). THEN I would mark their message as spam on my end (for the filters) and bounce the message back.
After they refused to cooperate with me, I threatened litigation and reporting them to various blacklisters (and would have followed through). Fortunately, I finally got them to quit mailing me.
It's been 6 months and I haven't heard a peep from them.
I always thought NO means Nitrogen Oxide...
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
I have never had much respect for Yahoo. I had an experience with them early on where I reported a site that they were hosting (then free) for spamming me. I was informed that they had no control over the websites that they hosted and flatly refused to make one of the them stop spamming me. I replied to them that if they didn't stop the spam, I would be doing some spamming of my own, by posting their reply, in full, to all the usenet news groups. They did reply after that they would be shutting the site down.
More recently (last month), we had a 14 year old girl post to one of the security mailing lists
that I'm on. Her best friend moved out of state and their parents both bought web cams so that the girls could remain in contact. She was on line using the Yahoo service to chat with her friend when a man broke into their chat session and started trying to get the girls to remove their clothing.
She was able to obtain some information from this induhvidual that was quite interesting - apparently Yahoo's service will allow other the people to come in over the wire and turn on your web cam remotely WITHOUT your knowledge or consent. It will allow them to monitor your conversations again WITHOUT informing you.
This particular man had been watching both the girls for months. He also particpated in a chat room that swapped URL's of Yahoo user's web cams. According to the man that she spoke with, she and her friend had achieved rather high ratings in this chat room, which lead him to try contacting the girls directly.
Fortunately, this young lady had the presence of mind to contact her parents who were able to coach her off camera on how to deal with this pervert to obtain as much information as possible.
Yahoo, when contacted, said that they do not currently have any plans to upgrade their service to stop this kind of incident from happening to anyone else. They were very informative about the fact that this has been a "known issue" with their web chat service for "quite some time".
Moral of the story - dictionary definition of yahoo - A crude or brutish person. Go check www.dictionary.com.
3 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I feel sorry for anyone who actualy gives out there real personal information to websites. Unless it is someone I expect be dealing with on a financial level, I fake my real name, address, and back-up email address.
However, over the years, I am sure that 'smith@aol.com' is getting tired of getting spam intended for me.
(probably just a coincidence) I followed their delete-your-account link from that email they sent out (i.e. https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user). After that page loaded up, my computer locked-up. Only thing that responded was the mouse. I was using Opera 7.21 on Debian. Anybody else have this problem? irritating.
Yahoo! has so many problems. Not only their customer service, but how easily accounts are stolen. I don't need the listed alternative e-mail address to get access to accounts.
Why? They don't have my real address. Because the main Yahoogroups account I've got is for reading yahoogroups on the web, and the email's pointed at my old excite.com address (which probably doesn't exist any more, but I certainly don't read it), while the yahoo mail account that's attached gets any groups announcement and yahoo-announcements and a small amount of real spam, and I clear it out occasionally but don't read it. I've got another yahoo account I use to send anonymous coward mail, which I only read when I'm expecting a response.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I know I deleted all the accounts I used in the early days no later than 2 1/2 years ago! Thank god (never thought I'd say this) that theglobe.com went under, because the other two were there!
I apologise to the new theglobe company, specifically, if there is a user "ericzen" there.
Seriously, though, what the F* is up with Yahoo! anyhow? I really, honestly did consider emailing some appropriate FCC-related department about this. Maybe I should be thinking BBB. I tried to login, and I was told to fuggoff; I tried deleting, I was told to login; I tried clicking the "got this in error" link, and I was told "uh-uh, we know you just tried logging" message (connotative interpretation).
Yahoo! needs to be phased-out.
F* Yahoo! F*'em up their stupid F*ing A*es! CockF*ers!
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
I've actually dated a lesbian and taken her away from her girfriend! She thought it was great. She gets the tongue and the dick.
You misspelled "I've actually installed Debian on my computer thingy! I think it's great! It needs tons of space on the harddisk though"
nt
http://www.fsckin.com/
I've got an account on Yahoo where I've received their 'special' yahoo marketing mail, with a reminder that if I don't want to receive this, I should go to their marketing page. I've done so, been informed that it might take 5 days to process (by hand no doubt, in triplicate). That was about a month and a half ago, and every week, I still receive marketing email from them. Anyone else had this problem?
Yes, I have double checked my marketing preferences.
-Mezz
if you deleted your yahoo account?
I don't understand.
For annoying paper spam, one thing you can do is to increase their costs. Return the Business Reply Mail envelope (after removing anything that might identify you). The sender is required by law to pay the return postage.
For the truly offensive, such as scam artists, return something more substantial. Find some lead sheet or flashing (good source is Home Depot in the roofing dept) and cut out some envelope-sized pieces, as much as you can fit in the BRM envelope. Tape it so it won't shift and tear the envelope. This reply mail alone won't cost them enough to go broke, but it at least provides some satisfaction, and if even a small percentage of people did it....
I have a paid Yahoo account because I like the extra storage space and features. For $30/year I get like 25 megs of space which is more than enough, plus pop3, extra filters, etc.
I never give out the email address; I merely forward mail from my primary account so that I can read HTML and MIME attachments. On my primary account I read mail in Emacs and have macros that strip out all the HTML and mime crud.
My forwarding script (procmail) puts a key word into the subject before forwarding; at the Yahoo end, I put in the trash anything without this key word. When I am done with whatever I have forwarded, I simply delete it. All my mail is preserved at the other account.
I used to post on Usenet a few times with this address so it does get a lot of spam but I never see it; everything goes into trash unless I specifically forwarded it. Even Yahoo's notification email will go in the trash, as will any other marketing stuff they send me.
Yahoo is a great company; I use several of their services every day and I think they do a really good job overall, though some may complain about limitations with the free email service. They don't have the sleazy, one-sided feeling that Hotmail and other Microsoft services seem to have and are more platform agnostic than MS, naturally. Their free email is double the storage of Hotmail's; what's not to love?
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Isn't that why YAHOO gives free email accounts out? When I signed up for yahoo, I gave them my yahoo email account, and all of the rest is bogus information. I'm sorry, but if you are stupid enough to trust these companies in lieu of all the marketing going on in the US today, then don't complain - unlike Microsoft's Hotmail, YAHOO does not covertly change all of your settings to 'on,' but leaves them off if they were already. In fact, in all the years I've had a YAHOO account, I have never had 1 piece of spam.
Huh? /NEVER/ speculated about that maybe, because I didn't believe there was any maybe there at all... AND then the woman and the little girl and my english writing class colluded to have me out in the hallway where she could describe exactly, in no uncertain terms why SHE would never go out with me. Of course, after that I realized it was like some horrible story, where 'leading someone down the garden path' is explained -- She didn't care 1 bit, and she proved it to me. AND then made damn sure I had to hire an escort to go to prom, but luckily for top dollar you can find one that can act ;-]
I think it's about groups. And the fact that, groups became a way to harvest people's
email. And Yahoo is perhaps too polite. Not that I'm perfect, but I can read between the lines... eventually anyway.
Anyway... What I hate is when I never,
Forward any of the spam that gets through to abuse@yahoo.com. Flood their inboxes with garbage and see how they like it. Of course you could also do some snooping around and find some yahoo exec emails and forward them there.
Ever since Yahoo started putting up Macromedia advertisements without a simple STOP button on it, (blinky,flashing,dashing,wiggling,zooming,can't make it stop distractions) I yanked out Macromedia from the machine. When a right click on an unwanted possibly noisy advertisement doesn't bring up the play, loop, rewind, forward options, it's broken. I operate my computer. Programs that won't properly shut down when requested are out of control and not to be trusted.
Until Macromedia is more interested in end users than advertisers and other force feed content creaters, flash stays off my machine.
The truth shall set you free!