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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."
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
The default preferences assume that you want to receive spam. But I'm not complaining, because it is a free service.
I mind the paper. Even though it's easy enough to throw it in the recycle bin and wash my guilty conscience of it, I'd still feel better if it were never created in the first place.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
Before this change you could specify if you wanted them to email you. Now you can do control how (and if) Yahoo contacts you on specific issues. From their point of view they are probably hoping that people will leave one or two things on instead of turning it all off. I doubt it will work though
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
what is apaling, is that instead of going from one "no" to many "no"s or at least one "no" to one "no" and a bunch of "yes"s, they simply change your preference to not hear from them at all, to hearing from them and everyone who gives them a ducket or two.
It is clearly about money and much, much less about doing what is right.
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
Yahoo provides a free, stable, POP3 service. Their "Yahoo! Delivers" advertising emails are very easy to filter out, so it's a very effective free POP3 IMO. Just filter their bullshit, and you will have no problems.
I have enough crapmail I receive at my house, I don't need more. When I visited the marketing preferences page and told them no for a second time, this is what I was returned
Thank you, your changes have been saved. Please allow approximately 5 days for this change to take effect.
Why would it take 5 days to remove me from a friggin mailing list? A simple delete query should remove me from the database immediately.
alias dir='rm -rf
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.
It's all bullshit. They only have to sell your name once in order to start recieving spam and junk. Note to the clue impaired: They "sell" your name when you create the account, before you say no to spam and junk.
If you don't agree to the terms of service, then you shouldn't be using the service.
Why the fuck is everybody always scheming to get a free ride?
evil adrian
I agree with you. Even though it takes more effort to throw out a credit card offer than delete an email, the fact that they had to pay around $0.30 to send it in paper and bulk mailing costs makes me not mind. Bulk email, which approaches free, has entirely different economics which makes it much more insidious by my perspective.
However, I don't feel the same about telephone solicitations. They've always outraged me, even though there is a cost involved. Before DNC was implemented, I encouraged everyone to keep phone solicitors on the line as long as possible without purchasing anything. I hoped that the ratio of per call cost to hit rate could be increased sufficiently to make the process no longer worthwhile. Others advocated this also, but it never seemed to catch on.
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 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.
Yahoo was my first "real" e-mail account; since college about a decade ago. My family and long time (or long lost) friends can always reach me using that account.
I had about 50 other accounts that opened and closed, at various ISP, jobs and cities. I am so careful with the Yahoo account that after all those years I get less SPAM in my Yahoo account that any "regular ISP" e-mail after a year.
So yes, I love my Yahoo account, read it twice a week, but use it to write twice a year as I answer back with my "of the moment" ISP account.
Or you can just ignore it, move on with your life and don't complain about something that is free.
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
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.
Yahoo requires you to sign in to your Yahoo account in order to delete that account.
My accidental solution--my account filled up with patches from Microsoft (which I still haven't found a way to install under Linux), and later I got a message from Yahoo saying that they had shut off my services because of the bounces, and they would turn them on if I reactived my account. Even if I had wanted to reactivate the account, I didn't have the password to do so.