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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."
Ok, rant off.
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
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?
Which only works if you can remember what the account you might have is. I don't know which account I made the mistake of giving an honest email address for. I am pretty sure it is not the one I use these days.
The point is that I ONLY gave Yahoo! my email address because they promised not to spam me. Now they have BROKEN that promise.
If they lie to their customers they are probably lying to their accountants and shareholders as well. With hindsight it is pretty easy to see that the manipulation of the California energy market by Enron should have been a warning that maybe they were manipulating other things.
Jim Cramer has a note on his monitor, 'financial irregularities means sell'. I suggest folk add another 'Broken undertakings means sell'
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
Yahoo! blasts you with non-stop advertising while you use the service. I had to uninstall Flash in IE and get a flash blocker for Mozilla just to be able to use the damned site without distractions. But, that aside --
I use Yahoo! bill pay, which costs me $5/month. I use Yahoo! wallet with shop.yahoo.com for most of my online shopping so I've got all the carts in one place and all my order history in one place. Yahoo gets a cut out of every sale there as well (not to mention the monthly fees the stores pay). That's cold, hard cash they're earning -- not just ad impressions.
I just checked and my marketing prefs haven't been turned back on. If they are, it's good-bye Yahoo!. If the Yahoo! folks are reading this, I *strongly* suggest you think twice about bending your paying users over the table.
They are going to get sued. Many times. At $1000 per spam.
They may well have tested on SpamAssassin prior to sending the mail. They very likely *want* their mail to get caught by spam filters. That way, people don't see the mail, and therefore don't go and change all of the "Yes you can sell my personal info" flags off again.
I, on the other hand, was extremely pissed when they stopped the POP3. A couple of years ago, I went ahead and paid Yahoo! to register a domain name for my "premium service" personalized mail address. I even renewed it for a second year. When I received the "no more POP3" notice in my inbox, I assumed that didn't apply to me because I was already a premium user. Wrong! They still wanted to dip into my wallet a little deeper and charge extra for POP3. There's already enough vendor lock-in in the world. The last thing I need is another company trying to nickel & dime me (I get enough of that with my mobile phone bill).
What morons. Giving POP3 access away for free saves them server space and bandwidth, so the only explanation I can come up with is that they want more eyeballs on the ridiculously huge ads they embed in their webmail interface. Screw that. I have better things to do with my time than wade through Flash ads while I'm trying to read email.
I canceled the premium service, switched the domain away from Verisign (I'll tell you where you can shove your damn SiteFinder), and now Yahoo! doesn't get a single cent from me... EVER AGAIN. Now I can check my email via webmail, pop3, or imap4 and I have better virus and spam controls than Yahoo! ever offered (thank you Spamassassin).
I feel sorry for the non-geeks out there who put up with crap like this from the likes of Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft etc. because they don't have the time or patience to investigate the alternatives.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.