Yahoo Mail Forcing Ads Through Adblock?

egNuKe asks: "Like some people here, I use Firefox and Adblock. I've blocked the ads that Yahoo puts in my inbox, however the next time I opened it, I've found other ads, and blocked them too. This happened for several times, until I figured out that Yahoo must have some script that checks if the ad is displayed and displays another one, if it hasn't. This is no big problem, I just needed to add several rules to Adblock to block the several ad sources they use. Here is the problem: when Adblock is running and effectively stopping Yahoo mail ads, Firefox would freeze (all open windows and tabs) for about 15 seconds. Then the page opens and there is no ads. The script must be on client side, since it's the browser that's freezing and not the network. Turning off Adblock solves the freezing problem. Is there a cure for this?" This is a touch-and-go issue as it basically boils down to the user's priority (not seeing ads) versus the services priority (displaying the ads it needs to allow the user to enjoy a free service). It was only a matter of time before someone thought to try and work around ad-blockers, and all this will eventually lead to is open warfare (competing Javascript or browser code in the browser) on your machine. Instead of working around the workaround, why not consider another service that doesn't inundate you with ads?

Comments

Gmail

[Kingrames]

I can send you a gmail invite. that'll fix it.

Re:Gmail

[Threni]

An advantage of using Gmail is you don't send out emails offering the chance to win tickets for last years World Cup in your sigfile. (Yes, I told Yahoo about this; No, I didn't get a reply). I see no point in using a Yahoo account when Gmail offers much more whilst still being free.

Re:Gmail

[dthable]

But Apple says Yahoo mail is the best and they even included it on their new phone. Everyone knows Jobs wouldn't lead us astray.

Re:Gmail

[freakxx]

oh no...anyone can sign up the gmail now...invite is not a need anymore :-)

Re:Gmail

[MrNormS]

Gmail has contextual ads beside the email. The "ticker-like item" is customizable to display whatever you want. Though gmail will continue to add the odd ad in there, you can simply disable the whole thing in settings. The contextual ads are there they are non-intrusive and they are not forcing the "ticker-like item" ones on you. I get the point though, free services have ads. Gmail's just happen to be way less intrusive than the other competitors services.

Re:Gmail

[Barny]

Actually, Gmail cellphone activation works here in Australia :)

Re:Gmail

[Short Circuit]

I wonder if they do the same thing for spam. If I mark a message as spam, then delete it, does it still get saved?

I doubt Google sees archival of massive volumes of spam as economical.

Re:Gmail

[ubernostrum]

Got an actual source for that? All the hysteria I've ever seen has been fueled by people who misinterpret the Gmail terms of service to mean "we never delete anything" instead of "this stuff's stored on distributed redundant clusters, so sometimes there's a lag between hitting delete and the message disappearing".

Re:Gmail

[42forty-two42]

They've even updated it since then with more specificity: "You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems."

GReasemonkey

[AuMatar]

You could run a greasemonkey script to remove the script causing all this.

Re:GReasemonkey

[posterlogo]

Oh yeah? Well I'll deploy my greaseape script to pwn your greasemonkey's ass!!

Re:GReasemonkey

[Arker]

I am using just noscript. Blocking scripts from yimg.com gets rid of the ads with no freeze-ups. It also, if memory serves, interfered with some function somewhere in mail, although the basics still seem to work. I normally let their ads run, as they aren't very intrusive. Then again I also use gmail for almost everything, and rarely login on yahoo anymore.

Opera

[TheDawgLives]

One trick that worked in Opera was to find out which javascript function was creating the adds and overwrite it. Opera allows you to define a user.js file and any functions in it overwrite the functions in any page loaded javascript. I just created a function with an empty body and I was good to go.

Re:Opera

[TheDawgLives]

Another one of my "tricks" was to create a user.css and move the ad div off the screen with a size of 0x0 and top of -1000px. That's more work as you have to copy the the site's original css, but it still gives an impression to the ad counter, you just don't have to see the ad.

View the ads or find another webmail

[jfclavette]

If I had a website relying on ads and a reliable way to do it, I'd terminate accounts of people with an ad blocker right off the bat. You are using a free service in exchange of which they are putting a bunch of advertisement on your screen. By blocking it, you become a free loader, absolutely useless for them as a customer. If you don't like the business model, pay for your webmail.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Raindance]

If I had a website relying on ads and a reliable way to do it, I'd terminate accounts of people with an ad blocker right off the bat. You are using a free service in exchange of which they are putting a bunch of advertisement on your screen. By blocking it, you become a free loader, absolutely useless for them as a customer. If you don't like the business model, pay for your webmail.

I would disagree for two reasons:

1. That's not true that adblockers are complete freeloaders on the Yahoo network. Attached to every mail you send from Yahoo is an advertisement for Yahoo Mail. That's presumably worth something- very possibly more than the ads you're blocking (especially as the type of customer who blocks ads is not likely to click on them).

2. Yahoo simply can't do this. People would scream bloody murder if their email- their online identity- was terminated. Bad, bad publicity and a quick erosion of trust for very little gain.

Personally? I'd switch to gmail. They've never pulled any shenanigans on me.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Zwaxy]

You can use POP3 with gmail, and then you don't see any ads at all. I don't know if Yahoo supports POP3 or not, but even if it does I guess they still tag an ad on the end of each mail you send.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[nra1871]

I personally like Gmail's ads. They add a lot of humor when having a back and forth discussion, coming up with stuff that is completely inappropriate. Often we have more fun discussing why Gmail decides we need to see "The secret coffee cos don't want you to know" more than the actual topic.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[L7_]

when you download your gmail to a pop3 reader, do you get the other stuff in the column that comes with the ads? Like the auto-parsing of any addresses in your email with a link to thier site on maps.google.com, auto-parsing what it sees as DHL, FedEx or UPS tracking numbers with a link to those web tracking services, or parses any dates and descriptions and links directly to adding them to your google calendar, or even better yet linking news site articles that have content that actually is relevant to the discussion?

Thats what gmail does for me, and why I use the web interface.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[LunaticTippy]

That's the secret. Make it better enough and the ads subtle enough and you can rake in the bucks. Give 'em flash and blink and noise and get blocked.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Arker]

Yahoo decided awhile back to remove POP access from free accounts. You now have to pay them for that access. While gmail gives it to you for free, then makes the web interface useful to you so you won't want to...

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Zwaxy]

I used to use the web interface. It really is a joy to use. Then one day about 6 months ago I found I couldn't log in. It's almost impossible to get any useful information from Google when you experience a problem. For over 2 weeks I couldn't access any of my old email at all. Then as if by magic it started working again.

That was when I stopped trusting 3rd parties to hold my information for me. Now I use POP3. The interface might not be so pretty, but at least I know I can access my mail when I want to.

Of course, I could use the web interface for reading and composing mail and use POP3 just for backing it up to local storage.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

By blocking it, you become a free loader, absolutely useless for them as a customer.

The math is nowhere near that simple.

You neglect one important factor - the network effect. It took a lot of eyeballs for a site like Yahoo to become successful, and it takes a lot of eyeballs to maintain that critical mass and stay successful - especially online where barrier to entry is low and users are notoriously capricious.

Every user of Yahoo's services tends to drag in other users - through popularity and word of mouth. Each 1 of those freeloaders may just very well be responsible for 2 ad-viewing, or even better, paying customers.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[supaneko]

What difference does it make if I don't see the ads? I NEVER click them anyway. I never support the ads in any shape, way, or form. And actually, the ads, for the most part, are mostly useless to me. I have never seen an ad on Yahoo that even remotely appealed to me. So, if I never click the ads and I never see ads that appeal to me, what difference does it make if I simply don't see them?

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[rm69990]

Yahoo! is offering free POP access on new accounts on at least yahoo.ca. I know, because I need a temporary e-mail address, and made one on yahoo. I was pleased to see it offers POP access, so I don't need to use their horridly slow interfaces.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[phrasebook]

I actually make a point of scanning the ads in my GMail messages from time to time, and following those that might interest me.

That is truly bizarre behaviour. Can you remember when you started to develop that? And do you do it with any other products/services?

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

It is bizarre, and I'm a bit baffled and academically curious to explain it myself. It's a pretty recent thing, and it's only in GMail.

I think it has something to do with a perceived disparity between GMail's pages vs. the 'average' web page in terms of (a) their elegance & simplicity, and (b) the usefulness of their incidental / extraneous content.

Perhaps I'm too accustomed to the "manual approach," i.e. avoiding links altogether, typing command lines & URLs instead of using bookmarks, typing search phrases instead of clicking search links, etc. By the intelligence of their offerings, Google has challenged some of my entrenched habits; for instance, I now search for addresses on Google proper & then click the resulting "Google map" link, instead of going to Google maps to type the address in. This approach adds a bit of address correction on the front end, I can type my text into a single search box instead of having to split it up into separate fields, and it's available right from [Ctrl + k] in Firefox.

I was also in the habit of copying UPS, USPS and FedEx tracking numbers & navigating to their respective tracking URLs to paste & track, and that for some time after Google started parsing those references & hyperlinking them automagically. That was a matter of muscle memory, most likely; in the back of my mind I *knew* Google parsed & linked those, but I would already be on UPS's site before I really became conscious of the fact that I could have saved steps by just using the link.

Maybe now I'm forming a new pattern of web behavior that's Google (or GMail) specific. I'm not sure, but after enough instances where the "Google way" turned out to be simpler than "my way," I'm starting to reflexively look for the "Google way" more and more.

I think that unlike most other companies -- who constantly try to find ways to jam more annoying bs into my field of attention -- Google has consistently surprised me with stuff that's actually useful & time saving. My old habits were borne of the former kind of web experience. So ultimately, I think Google's behavior has caused me to have a different (better) set of expectations regarding their incidental content.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find out if Nextag has Fourier transforms in stock & ready to ship...

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[nra1871]

My ISP's mail sucks. Plus Gmail has the single best mail interface I've ever used. I wish there was a desktop client like it available. What makes you think your ISP isn't filing your emails away somewhere?

I just don't understand some of you

[GweeDo]

I personally do have Adblock installed on my machine here, but I only use turn it on for sites that uses ads in a way that are obtrusive. Think of those lovely sites that uses flash to overlay ads that you have to figure out how to get rid of. Those sites, sure. But think of something like /. here. The ads don't get in the way. But they also let the service continue to be free for me. I won't block /. ads unless they start doing something to get them in my way.

Now, there is a somewhat person reason for this for me too. I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive. If people block it, we will die off. We won't ever put ads in the way, but some people just can't stand to let us make money for a free service to happen.

I just don't understand some of you.

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[Kelson]

I won't block /. ads unless they start doing something to get them in my way.

Agreed there. If an ad interferes with reading the site, or blares audio without asking me, I'll block it. I remember one site that had a pair of interesting articles (about website usability, ironically enough) that had so many ads it was almost impossible to read. I blocked all the ads, read the two articles, then never returned to the site.

With most of them, it's just as easy to tune them out.

Oddly, the only ads I can recall clicking on in the last year or so are on a handful of webcomics that I read. I wonder if that says something...

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[novus ordo]

Adblock Plus has a whitelist so you can support the sites you like while blocking all others.

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[fotbr]

I don't buy based on ads. I don't do research based on ads. Why should I waste my bandwidth, AND YOURS, loading ads that are not going to result in a sale, or even a click for that matter? Bandwidth costs money. You should be thanking me for blocking ads and saving your business money, since there was no possibility of me clicking on the ad anyway.

And yes, I even block google ads, even though they are the least annoying. I still won't click them, so why bother with them in the first place?

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, there is a somewhat person reason for this for me too. I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive. If people block it, we will die off. We won't ever put ads in the way, but some people just can't stand to let us make money for a free service to happen.

I just don't understand some of you.

Let me try to help you understand. First, consider that not everybody blocks ads. If you run a site that depends on
ad revenue, you will have some people downloading and viewing your ads, but you must accept that not everyone will.
Some of us really dislike ads, and some of us even believe that the web is a one-to-many publishing medium that exists
for people to express themselves with, not for people to try to make a go of business ventures that are so pathetic that
the only way they can survive is if everybody that visits their site views their ads.

Second, the way that some sites display ads is simply unacceptable. When I point my web browser at www.domain.com,
I am expressly downloading content from www.domain.com, and from nowhere else. If that site attempts to trick my
browser into requesting files from any other domain, it is pissing in the wind. I guarantee this behaviour with
any browser I use via a custom proxy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Keep that in mind if you want to
embed ads in your pages. You had better plan on managing those ads yourself, because some people's browsers are
not going to fetch them from anywhere else.

Finally, you need to come to grips with the fact that some people believe that the web would instantly become a
better place if all sites that depended on ad revenue vanished. Granted, a lot of useful and popular sites would
disappear, but I assure you that equally useful sites would fill their places. There were excellent free search
engines before google, and there would be again.

If you cannot survive with web surfers exercising their ability and right to control what HTTP requests they do and
do not make, then kindly release your domain name as you die.

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[LunaticTippy]

The "reasoning" these ad-people use is that ads you are forced to watch, against your will, will somehow corrupt your free will. That your unconscious mind will be screaming "Ford! Coke! Gap! Etc!" every time you try to think clearly about making a purchase. Maybe it's even true. I find myself wanting to punch the monkey from time to time, and a free iPod seems compelling to me. I haven't seen an internet ad in a long time, either!

So, don't waste your time trying to be reasonable. It's all some kind of marketing voodoo that isn't bound by logic.

Haven't noticed, myself

[markbt73]

I use Firefox with AdBlock and haven't seen an ad on Yahoo Mail in ages. But I haven't switched to their new layout, either. Maybe that makes a difference (and if so, I'll never switch).

Dear Slashdot,

[The Mysterious X]

I signed up for a service that is paid for by displaying advertisments.
I am trying to avoid my side of the bargin by blocking the ads, however, the service provider seems to have prevented me from doing this easily.
Can anyone help?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[LunaticTippy]

You are painfully loyal to these corporations. They can change the terms of service at any time. They won't hesitate to make the service more annoying and profitable if the mood strikes.

I don't use Yahoo, but the way I've seen it work at other places is like this:
1. Offer useful, non-annoying service
2. Become successful
3. Make service annoying
4. Poor deluded users are stuck with it, or they can change providers (which often sucks or is simply impossible)

I had an account with mail.com many years ago. They had good webmail and lots of neat-o domain names. Slowly they started sucking until now it makes me want to die using their site on IE. Blinding, flashing, musical, interstitial, repetitous hell. That wasn't the deal. They changed the rules. They get blocked.

Yahoo did the same exact thing, I can guarantee it. They got wise to the getting blocked part, and now they're trying to ruin that too. Fuck 'em. I finally moved away from my mail.com account. I got tired of having to whip up a greasemonkey script every few weeks to deal with their latest retardation. It sucked. I've had that email for 10 years or so. I'll probably lose some important stuff in the future such as forgotten registrations, long-lost friends, etc.

We don't owe these bastards anything. If they can change the rules so can we. Eventually some honest company will come along with a sustainable business model instead of this bait-and-switch bullshit. I'm so sick of having something useful and good grow ad-fucked time after time.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[The Mysterious X]

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173 .html

It's in section 2.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Russellkhan]

Sooner or later, I would have to find some source of funding. One choice is to charge for it. For people who value the principles of open source software and the like, this is not a disireable option. So I have to find another way to support it.

Ads are an easy way to do this.

If I'm understanding you correctly, I disagree with your idea of "the principles of open source". I think that charging for a service is much more in line with open source principles than supporting it with the use of ads.

Get your own domain and/or an aliasing service

[Kris_J]

The first thing you need to do, more or less straight away, is find a way to separate your email address from the place your email comes to rest. I have a domain AND an account with Spamgourmet. One is for fighting spam, but both are so I can hand out addresses that are independant from whatever service I choose to use to actually receive my mail. This allows you to easily leave crappy places that force ads on you or otherwise stuff up your mail. Start advertising your new address now, so that in a year or so when Yahoo pulls some new crap that pisses you off, you have the option of leaving them without any of your friends noticing. I also recommend setting up a bunch of IM accounts, then using an ad-free all-in-one IM client like Miranda IM and move away from email in general.

Why not allow it

[vga_init]

I hate ads just as much as anyone else. I certainly hate being subject to "driveby" ads where you happen to visit a web page once in your life for no important reason (ie check out a story linked to by Slashdot), and I would stop at nothing to block those bastards. Yahoo, however, is offering you a pretty valuable service (free web mail), and I assume you enjoy the benefits of having it, so why not let them have their ads? Quid pro quo is not too unfair in this case.

If you really want to get the ads off of your Yahoo mail account, pay them. I have a premium account with Yahoo because my ISP partners with them to provide all the web services. I log in--no ads! It's not too shabby.

Re:Why not allow it

[Achromatic1978]

Pay? For an internet service? What are you, some kind of capitalist? Subsidize the cost of it being free? What are you, some kind of capitalist?

Yes those servers are free, damnit. Who pays for bandwidth and development time, these days, anyway. Get out of the past.

;)

Use the options

[dantal]

in addblock just click the radio for hide add instead of remove add, the add are still downloaded but you don't see them

Interesting, considering...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had an ad come up when I clicked on this article. Not a popup, but one of those annoying things that layer across the content. It smacked up right in the middle of the web page and asked me if i wanted to take a survey.

I had a choice of hitting Yes, or I guess letting the ad sit there blocking my viewing the content.

There was no close option.

I don't mind ads, but what is the purpose of annoying me?

related to bug?

[lpq]

Sounds similar in "symptoms" (the freezing and the 15-20 second period) to this Firefox bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36684 9.

I take it that you can't reproduce the problem in IE or Opera?
What's they cpu usage? Does it freeze all firefox windows or just the Yahoo window?

blocking ads vs not seeing them...

[Animaether]

what if he doesn't want the ad to be downloaded at all? For bandwidth reasons ( hello Belgium, you poor saps :/ ) or just for the usual "they're tracking me!" reasons?

Filterset.G suckage explained

[pestie]

I used to run Adblock with Filterset.G, but I had a number of problems with this setup:

• Filterset.G didn't include some rules for major sites, like MySpace.
  
• Because of that, I added many of my own blocking rules, which promptly got overwritten every time Filterset.G updated.
  
• The guy who created Filterset.G is an egotistical whiner who didn't like his "hard work" being copied without attribution, so he became a prick about his "licensing terms." This has nothing to do with how well Filterset.G works, but annoys me personally.
  

So I switched to Adblock Plus, which:

• Allows me to subscribe to a non-Filterset.G rule set, which seems to work a whole lot more effectively than Filterset.G ever did.
  
• Allows me to block DOM elements as well as the usual URL patterns, which is incredibly useful for blocking ads on certain sites.
  
• Allows me to create my own rules that aren't overwritten when the subscribed rule list updates.
  

Adblock Plus rocks. There's just no comparison.

Only for proxies

[pestie]

Only ad-blockers that works as proxies have that issue (Privoxy, for example). Firefox extensions and the like handle HTTPS just fine.

Re:All ads are obtrusive.

[hazem]

The whole point of advertising is to scream "OOH! OOH! BUY ME!" louder than the other guy. I don't buy stuff on a whim without any sort of information about it, and I certainly don't trust companies to offer unbiased information on their own products; hence, ads are only a waste of money for them (at least when I view them) and an annoyance for me.

Actually, that's the "old" mode of advertising. Today, it's more about creating a feeling about a product and company - giving a sense of the community you could be a part of. For example, how many advertisements actually tell you anything about the product? There aren't many. Most are about the fun, good-looking, exciting, partying people you will be with when you use the product.

It's also about impresssions. Today you might not be in the mood for some shoes. But, someday you will be, and sadly/strangely/interestingly, there is a correlation between how many impressions of an ad you've seen and which product you actually get. So when you DO want a pair of shoes, the hope is the thought of the company that has the most compelling lifestyle to offer you will pop in your head. When I said "buy a pair of shoes", which brand did you just think of? Nike? Adidas? Asics? Saucony? Whichever one it was "won".

Anyway, look at the ads and you'll see few of them actually describe the product and how you'll use it. Many many more of them are about how cool you'll be, or how much better your life could be because of the product.

seconded

[Nasarius]

Any self-respecting geek should have his own domain. For less than ten bucks a year, you can get a domain with DNS and email forwarding (I use Namecheap, but there are others). Forward everything to a Gmail address, and use POP3 to make a backup.

Re:seconded

[unborn]

Better yet, add Google Apps for your domain and there'll be no need to forward.

Privoxy is the solution!

[feld]

Why do you use Ad Block Plus? It just bloats up firefox!

Use Privoxy and force Firefox / Opera through the proxy on your localhost. It filters the ads for you! :)

Also, I just tested -- I created an account on Yahoo and tried regular Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Mail Beta.

I saw no ads. None. Nada.

Privoxy > Ad Block Plus in my opinion. I never see ads thanks to this. And it's less work.

Give it a shot guys.

Whoosh....

[karnal]

Swing and a miss...

daydreaming

[thinsoldier]

There should be an official standard for advertising on web pages.

Advertisers should adhere to it.
Browsers should adhere to it.
Webmasters should adhere to it.
Advertisers should ensure that the webmasters adhere to it.

Then...
have the contract you agree to when signing up for ad-supported services indicate that the site uses the official industry standard advertising method. Any attempt on the users part to block the ads is in breach of contract. The browser gets a certificate indicating that it must display those ads.

Regular sites like .....
can continue to use the current methods of advertising where it's a constant battle between the advertisers and the adblockers.

Some foolish site owners will get greedy and try to push the advertising certificate on their users starting at the home page. Their traffic will plummet.
Others will continue on as the always have with the regular ads and continue generate the revenue they're used to as if nothing happened.
Some people will change web-mail services to another site that their ad blocker will work on.
The majority will not really care and will stay with their current web-mail service.
Even many people that do care will consider the 9 years worth of messages and 9 years worth of handing out business cards with the same address that they have with their current service to be more important than blocking ads.

What do you think?
Lets start a discussion and get these ideas worked out implemented and standardized before CSS3 is out.

Re:daydreaming

[oyenstikker]

* Firefix will not adhere to it on principle, but there will be 17 plugins that claim to, 3 of which actually work.
* Konqueror will support it, but 90% of the ads won't show because KHTML properly handles CSS errors but the authors assume a laxer CSS parser. There will be an option to turn it off.
* Opera will not support it because the users don't want it.
* Internet Explorer will claim to support, but there will be the usual embrace, extend, extinguish, and all ads will be replaced with MSN ads.
* Lynx will put a note in the man page that the next version of Lynx will support frames.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:All ads are obtrusive.

[thinsoldier]

I was playing a word association game with some co-workers once.
1 person said "pets"
the other person said "food"
I said "Purina Puppy Chow".

I have 9 Cats.

Re:related issue

[Guppy06]

"I read somewhere that Microsoft teamed up with CIA to block myspace."

Finally, some good news about the War on Terror!

Touch and no go.

[billcopc]

TANSTAAFL! Yahoo has ads. Slashdot has ads. Just about every site on the net has ads. If you want email without ads, you can pay a real email hosting company that will provide you with POP3/IMAP/SMTP access for a fee. Heck you can even get that from Yahoo, I think it's 30$ a year or so.. if you had been looking at their ads you would know ;)

But if you want something for free, you have to pay with your eyeballs. Someone has to foot the bill for the web hosting, and the sysadmins, and the time and effort that go into building a site. Or are you one of those guys who gets HBO for free, spliced off your neighbor's cable ?

The ad blocking game is no different from copy-protection schemes, or product activation, or any other undesirable software trait. They're like human viruses; they start out as a minor nuisance (simple banner ads), then you develop antibodies (adblock), then the virus grows stronger (javascript detection), then come stronger antibodies (adblock++.Net 2.0 GT), and then finally the virus grows so strong and belligerant it just plain kills you (ad company buys out Mozilla and makes you watch 2-minute full-screen noisy ads every time you click, then forces you to complete a "short" survey before letting you read the actual page).

I personally don't employ any kind of ad blocking.. yes, it slows down page loads a little bit, but I don't mind it so much. An extra second or two won't kill me, I'm usually multitasking anyways. The sight of ads doesn't bug me, I just scroll past.. every now and then I'll actually see one that catches my interest and click through, because sometimes I actually discover something I like. The only gimmick I use against ads is FlashMute, because the last thing I need is for the neighbors to call the cops on me, from hearing those stupid screaming smilies pumped through my loud stereo.

Yahoo = riding pure inertia

[Pausanias]

Sarcasm well taken, but it seriously is amazing how little Yahoo has bothered to evolve since, oh, about 1999. I can bear text ads but I cannot stand graphical ones. I started using adblock on Yahoo (with my own rules) as soon as it came out (was it around 2002?). And that was with phenomenal success---I blocked all incoming ads with about 15 minutes worth of detective work. Back then I figured it'd only be a few months till they figure it out; and then they will somehow block the blocking. Guess what, five years later I'm still blocking all their ads. Not that I visit their site that often anymore---GMail is my default mail account now.

Here's a few reasons why noone should use Yahoo as their mail system:

• Messages dated to the year 2038 appear in my Inbox rather than getting filtered to Bulk Mail. Huh? Isn't date filtering the most obvious filtering you can do? Turns out you have to pay $20/yr for their "best" Spam filter.
• You still have to pay $20/yr for POP access. GMail is free.
• You get 1GB of space, and have to pay $20/yr for 2. GMail has almost 3GB for free.
• Graphical and flash ads are plentiful in Yahoo mail. You have to pay $20/yr to rid yourself of them. GMail has text ads only.

Don't even get me started on GMail vs. Yahoo maps. Or GCal vs. Yahoo Calendar. Yahoo are not innovating; they are riding the pure inertia of their 1996 early start.

Oh, here's a word for those of you who are moaning about unethical users blocking ads: some of us are truly incapable of tuning out obnoxious banners and flash animations. It realy ruins our internet experience. Don't worry. The sheep will always be there to provide you with advertising revenue. As for the rest of us, if you want to win us over, use text ads only. You will get many more clicks from us, that's for sure.

But Apple says Yahoo mail is the best and they even included it on their new phone. Everyone knows Jobs wouldn't lead us astray.

Re:Yahoo = riding pure inertia

[enosys]

I have an account with Yahoo Canada. A few months ago I was able to enable POP3 access if I agreed to receive some spam. However, they did not support encryption and so I felt that was useless. I just checked and I was able to activate POP3 access without agreeing to receive any spam, and SSL is supported both for POP3 and SMTP. Sure, Yahoo is just trying to catch up to Google, but I think they're doing fairly well. I sent a message using SMTP and they didn't even append the stupid ad at the bottom.

Just one warning regarding POP3: It was originally disabled and the option for enabling it is a set of radio buttons which allow you to choose between web+POP3 and forwarding. There doesn't seem to be any way to disable POP3 once the selection has been made.

Re:All ads are obtrusive.

[FireFury03]

there is a correlation between how many impressions of an ad you've seen and which product you actually get.

This may be true for "good" adverts (ones that aren't designed to be nothing but annoying), but the converse is true for me when I repeatedly see annoying adverts.

For example, when shopping around for car insurance, I never even bother to get a quote from elephant.co.uk because their TV ads are so unbelievably annoying. Yes, their advert made their name stick in my head, but sadly for them it was filed in the "never buy from these people" category.

If you want to make me pay attention to an advert in a good way, make it funny, non repetitive and relevant.