Yahoo Denies Ad-blocking Users Access To Email (washingtonpost.com)

JoeyRox writes: Yahoo is running an A/B test that blocks access to Yahoo email if the site detects that the user is running an Ad Blocker. Yahoo says that this a trial rather than a new policy, effecting only a "small number" of users. Those lucky users are greeted with a message that reads "Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail." Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.

Comments

Awwww thats so cute

[bazmail]

Yahoo! think its a player. Good for you Yahoo!.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[RogueyWon]

Yahoo provides email services for quite a number of big ISPs. Certainly, the email services for BT (which is still, I think, the UK's largest ISP) are provided by Yahoo and just given a light BT-specific reskinning.

So there might be quite a lot more people out there using Yahoo mail accounts than you would suspect. Some of them probably don't realise it themselves.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[bigwheel]

It might just be someone spoofing the email address, rather than having the account hacked. You can check the exploded packet headers and look at mail relay to find out if this is what happened. It is annoying, but not nearly as bad as being hacked.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[sh00z]

Every year I get spam emails from my acquaintances who use Yahoo, and the inevitable email of shame "Ignore that message, my account was hacked."

The full accounts aren't hacked (i.e., login credentials aren't compromised), but Yahoo has a long-standing security hole through which its users' address books can be accessed. It's trivial to spoof the "From" field, so the intruders make the spam look like it's coming from friends. I emptied all Yahoo address books, and the problem has gone away.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Slashdot Junky]

It doesn't matter if Yahoo is or isn't a big player. They aren't the only player looking for methods to combat ad-blocking, and moves like this will be made by others in time. Even if this specific approach hasn't been thought of by anyone else, the press is sharing the concept with the world more and more with each new article.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, I think the tech community is mostly all in agreement with everyone else when they say "Wait...Yahoo is still around...and has email?"

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[gmack]

I would would be very annoyed with my internet provider if they put ads on a service I was paying for. You can charge me money, or you can put ads on it. not both.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[pr0fessor]

TV channels have been doing it for a while... You can watch our primetime content the day after it airs but you have to sit through commercials or some offer a subscription. I don't have a problem with this so long as the commercials are tasteful and not drive-by adware/malware type crap.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly my sentiments. Yahoo "small business", which became Luminate, er, Aabaco Small Business, is even slower to "manage." The inability to download mail preserving the folder structure is retarded. It takes forever to FTP upload.

If Yahoo makes this stupid ad blocker permanent I'll probably move my domains + websites over to a different provider.

What's a good alternative to Yahoo webhosting these days?

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Wootery]

And this is why we don't put exclamation-marks the name of a company or product. It just looks silly.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[RogueyWon]

I actually still have one of the BT/yahoo email accounts I mentioned in my GP post (even though BT haven't been my ISP for a decade now, I pay a small fee to keep the email account because of the faff associated with changing all the accounts linked to it). I can confirm that it does indeed have advertising if you aren't running an adblocker, though for the time being at least, it raises no objections to me using Adblock Plus when I log in.

There was a fair old bit of fuss some years back, when BT migrated its users from the bespoke email service it had been providing onto the reskinned Yahoo accounts. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, BT and Yahoo just decided to tolerate that "bit of fuss" and carried on regardless.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[squiggleslash]

Yahoo Mail is one of their few products that large numbers of people still use. Remember, at one point it was the smart alternative to Hotmail.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[BronsCon]

What's a good alternative to Yahoo webhosting these days?

Anything. Hell, if I had to choose between Yahoo! web hosting and a bullet to the head, it would be the last decision I ever had to make.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Wycliffe]

Yeah, I think the tech community is mostly all in agreement with everyone else when they say "Wait...Yahoo is still around...and has email?"

I have a yahoo account. I use it for testing purposes when I want to send/receive from an "outside source" as all my other emails are with google.
I also use yahoo as a backup in pidgin for IM because for some reason the great wall of china blocks google but doesn't block yahoo.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[mlts]

There are many webhost providers. Lunarpages, Rackspace, Amazon, etc. I personally prefer IaaS offerings, and would rather run my own VM on a provider like linode, just so I have assurance that everything from the OS on up is properly secure.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[The-Ixian]

I have also had my yahoo e-mail account for many years.

I even had a pretty weak password on it for a lot of those years (dictionary word) and it never got "hacked".

As a matter of fact, the only time I have been "hacked" was when I lost control of a domain that I had tied to some Google services a while back. Somebody snapped up the domain and used it to change the password on my main google account. I got it all worked out, but it was totally my fault in the first place.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[gmack]

Heh. While I wholeheartedly agree with you, ads on cable television have already set the precedent.

Care to take a guess why I refuse to have cable TV in my house?

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Darinbob]

And I PAY for this email service through my ISP. If they block the mail of paying customers then they're certainly not within their rights.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Darinbob]

However cable television subscribers are not required to actually watch those advertisements. There is no message that says "your programming will be suspended until you stop leaving the room to pee during commercial breaks." And even on DVRs you are allowed to fast forward past the commercials (despite lawsuits trying to prevent this).

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Darinbob]

No, you see the ads even if you pay unless you use some sort of ad blocking service.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[thegarbz]

I use a Yahoo mail account. I can't say that I've been to their website in the past 10 years though and as long as they don't start injecting ads into the my POP3 session I'm all good.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[KGIII]

Wow, you're a wee lad. Sit down kiddies, Grandpappy KGIII is gonna tell you a pointless story...

The K6-2 was my first exposure to AMD. I'd always just used Intel before that and the data center had Sun equipment and the office had Sun workstations. I had the AMD K6-2 350 with Windows ME on it and it was *stable* to the point where I had multiple months of uptime while running an OpenNap server and a server hub (connecting disparate servers into one big server - think distributed Napster, basically). I had it overclocked to just a whisker under 500 MHz and it was still stable. It was hot but stable.

I had broadband at the office (upgraded from an ISDN to an OC12 at the time - as I recall, later an OC48 but I'd been "kicked out" of my own DC by then and had real competent people running things) and moved the computer into the server room and ran the hub from there. Eventually, Napster was attracting a lot of legal attention at the the time - it might have been Kazaa that was in the news or whatnot, we were visited by some men who had a taste for drama and dark attire. It would appear that a variety of illicit things were being shared on the network and I was asked if they could manage it for us and, if not, if I'd be so kind as to disable it.

They were still in the office and followed me in and observed me just pressing and holding the power button to force it to shut off. They didn't want to take it with them (I'd have asked them to get a warrant) or anything but they did want to monitor it and collect the data from it. As the hub it could see all the searches, file connections and transfers, and things like that. After they left I asked a tech to wipe the drive and I don't actually know what happened to the computer after that.

This was before the PATRIOT ACT as I recall? I'm not entirely sure of the date but I know it was that computer. I think 9/11 might have happened but I don't think we'd quite reached the TSA/DHS stages of life at that point. I'm pretty sure that they didn't have NSL things at the time. It was a pretty stupid thing for me to have done but it was kind of exciting. I can only imagine the world of hurt that I'd be in today if that situation were to happen in today's world. Sadly, this was only somewhere around 15 years ago. It's amazing how much has changed in such a short time.

Today? I'd probably be facing legal issues or have had been forced to install some software to allow them to monitor the connections and traffic. OpenNap didn't encrypt anything like search data or connectivity data. As the hub, anything that left the individual OpenNap server was something I could see in the logs, at least that's how I remember it. I don't think that I could *easily* view chat as the connection was made across the hub and then the connection was made P2P but the searches and the selected transfers could be seen if they searched for music/porn/files across more than just the server they connected to - you didn't have to connect to the hub and each server could run independently of each other but when they were connected to the hub you could search the whole thing. I had both a hub and a server running.

Hmm... I think it was kgiii.no-ip.org:8088 and metal-hub.no-ip.org:8089 for the hub. Something like that, at any rate. I think the combined users were in the 20-30,000 most of the time with peaks during nights and weekends. As I recall, I used something called WinMX to connect. We survived for a couple of years and they kept going for a while after I left. I sincerely believe that those sorts of activities would land me in prison or in a civil courtroom today. It really is amazing how much the landscape has changed.

We were, shall we say, still a wee bit like the Old West back then. It was a lot more tame than it was when we dialed into individual computers or small networks (it took like a day for an email to travel all the way to Australia but it was awesome and it sometimes actually worked) but it wasn't as tame as it is today. Don't get me wrong, it was never real

Re: Awwww thats so cute

[Gliscameria]

DOZENS will be affected. DOZENS!

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[RockDoctor]

I@m just checking that my Thunderbird Portable on my memory stick still works.

... Downloading away merrily on the account, not seeing any adverts.

Re:Awwww thats so cute

[Agripa]

AT&T outsources email services to Yahoo as well and it is terrible. I have not been able to add or access my AT&T email accounts for more than a year. I still receive mail and I can send mail but I can no longer add my other email addresses so that I can use the AT&T (really Yahoo I assume) SMPT server to send email for them. The function is there but it does not work.

I assume that email will soon become another deprecated service like NNTP which will require a third party provider.

To do list

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Disable AdBlock
2) Login
3) Set forwarding to other email account / Send all mails to that address
4) Logout
5) Enable AdBlock

Sorry, no profit, but the end result will be satisfactory.

Re:To do list

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself... I get Nigerian princes offering me a share of their $$$ which = profit!

Re:To do list

[nmb3000]

Alternatively, you can just use AdBlock to block their AdBlock blocking.

According to this post, you can avoid their blocking by adding this custom filter:

@@||yahoo.com$elemhide

I can't test it since they aren't blocking my ancient Yahoo mail account, but unless they're doing some heavy server-side detection, a combination of custom AdBlock filters and/or a NoScript surrogate script should take care of things. And it's just a matter of time before the former gets added to a list like Easylist's AdBlock Warning Removal list.

Re:To do list

[lister king of smeg]

1) Disable AdBlock
2) Login
3) Set forwarding to other email account / Send all mails to that address
4) Logout
5) Enable AdBlock

Sorry, no profit, but the end result will be satisfactory.

if you don't login to your account every so many days they will deactivate your email account or so I am told

Re:To do list

[lister king of smeg]

Alternatively, you can just use AdBlock to block their AdBlock blocking.

According to this post, you can avoid their blocking by adding this custom filter:

@@||yahoo.com$elemhide

I can't test it since they aren't blocking my ancient Yahoo mail account, but unless they're doing some heavy server-side detection, a combination of custom AdBlock filters and/or a NoScript surrogate script should take care of things. And it's just a matter of time before the former gets added to a list like Easylist's AdBlock Warning Removal list.

Yeah I have some greasemonky scripts running that block ad-block-blockers I think if it gets more meta than that I go the Stallman way and just use wget for everything and rip out the JavaScript.

Re:To do list

[BronsCon]

You forgot step 2a) Get infected by malware-laden Yahoo! ad.

Re:To do list

[spire3661]

Yahoo charges a yearly fee to forward your emails out....

I gues you deserve what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're using webmail.

Friends don't let friends use webmail.

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[CodeArtisan]

> I switched to webmail about 10 years ago and have never regretted it. ...not yet. You will, when it's too late.

Too late for what?

Seriously, what are the perils of email that anything could exist that I "wouldn't regret until it's too late."

The major one is you lose all your emails when your webmail provider shuts down.

I have a yahoo account that I use basically as a spam catching address. I access it via a mail client, though, so never have to deal with the web interface.

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[MacTO]

The major one is you lose all your emails when your webmail provider shuts down.

A lot of people switched to free email services so that they wouldn't lose their email address when they switch providers (may that be a consumer ISP or institutional provider). In this respect, I suspect most people benefited. The popular services have been available for approximately 10 to 20 years. How many people have had the same ISP for that time?

(Yes, I know there are other ways of handling this. None of those ways are particularly cheap or accessible. On top of that, at best, they just insulate you from a provider shutting down. That is to say, you still have to scramble to find a new provider when one shuts down even though you may be able to keep your address.)

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[Rakarra]

The major one is you lose all your emails when your webmail provider shuts down.

I doubt that gmail is shutting down any time soon. But even if I lost them, I pretty much don't care about them very much. I don't use my mailbox as a permanent archive anymore, as any service provider, any at all, is inherently untrustworthy. The only things really tied to that are that it's an address I use when registering services. I suppose it could be a minor inconvenience to register a different address with them.

But email addresses are transitory unless you own and operate your own domain, far more effect for little reward than most people like me are willing to go through. Without that, your options are either a web mail provider who -might- disappear some day, or an ISP who might terminate your account forever on the first missed payment (which also happened to me after I filed a billing dispute with AT&T..)

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[Rakarra]

Though I suppose reading a bit more carefully, we might both agree that using an actual email client to connect to the POP/IMAP ports that many webmail providers offer is a decent compromise.

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[Cro Magnon]

The longevity is a double-edged sword. When I left my ISP mail, I had relatively few emails, most of which were spam. I have 100X more stuff in gmail than every previous provider combined. Most of it's not important, but it would still affect me more than my previous switches did.

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[Darinbob]

Webmail is convenient so that you can check your personal email while at work. Especially if the service only provides POP3 but not IMAP (which seems common for some bizarre reason).

Re:I gues you deserve what you get...

[Geeky]

I use Google Apps with my own domain, but I was lucky enough to get in while it was free and so far it remains free for users who'd already started using it before the charges came in. It's ideal - if Gmail disappears, I can just find an alternative service and point my MX records at it - no tie in at all. Even if I was starting now, I'd consider it worth the cost - a few quid a month to have relatively hassle free email.

I connect via IMAP on my desktop, with it set to keep all mail, so I have a permanent archive if I need it. Using Thunderbird for that, so basically it's mbox. That gives me the benefit of a simple plain text archive with all the convenience of gmail. The Apps accounts don't get ads either, which is another plus.

Yes, it's more hassle to set up than just using gmail or outlook.com or whatever, but it's not like I've got to maintain mail servers myself - just a domain and a couple of DNS records.

And I'm well within my rights to leave

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Yahoo needs less users. That's their problem, too many reasons for people to use it.

Re:And I'm well within my rights to leave

[meerling]

Do you mean the users that have actually logged in sometime within this decade?
Yeah, I hear all 30 of them were really annoyed at this new policy. :)

Legality?

[Richard_at_work]

Why would there be any question about the legality of this? Yahoo! doesn't have to allow you access to its service, and its now setting requirements to do so.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, not all versions of Yahoo e-mail are free. (although they might be slowly shedding their paid offerings...)

Secondly, a dismissive, "Why would there be any question about legality?" is something one only hears from people with no legal experience. The law isn't a codification of what you think the rules should be, and so many people have met their commercial demise by starting with the assumption that something is "surely" ok to do.

Thridly, not every country subscribes to the neoliberal mindset, thankfully. It may be that some legal systems do not accept that someone can require consumption of promotional content except in regulated circumstances. This might especially be the case for services which have more than entertainment value and where loss of service might cause difficulty, e.g. having to change an e-mail address. This is why one asks legal experts rather than /.

Re: Legality?

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's simple misdirection - people are asking, "is Yahoo being a dick?" and Yahoo is answering, "it's perfectly legal." Which has nothing to do with the question but many people will fall for it because they [somehow, still, inexplicably, despite all evidence to the contrary] still equate legality with ethics.

n.b. It may be the users who are being the dicks, wanting something for nothing (#include malvertising.h), but that's not the question here.

Re:Legality?

[Xest]

Agreed, I don't see a legal issue with this, they have the right to serve what they want from their servers assuming it isn't outright malware.

Similarly though, users have every right to use countermeasures to bypass this because they also have the right to do what they want in terms of manipulating any content served to them for display. It's one of the key design features of web standards dating back to even the earliest versions of HTML - the idea that a user agent can process data in a manner that best suits the end user whether that's ripping out style sheets and images, applying high contrast style sheets for better readability, or refusing to accept certain additional content from the server or referenced servers.

Yahoo can do this legally all it wants, but it's just entering an arms race it can never win - the end user has control of their user agent which means the user can always determine what is and isn't rendered to screen at the end of the day and nothing Yahoo can do can ever override that.

Re:Legality?

[cdrudge]

While you do make good points under general circumstances, can you identify ANY law in ANY country in the world where Yahoo wouldn't be within it's right to do what it did?

Re:Legality?

[frederick.armstrong]

Well, I daresay it would matter if you are a paying customer as opposed to a non paying customer, eh?

Re: Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to ask "is this legal?" or hear someone say "better run this through the legal department" then you know that it is unethical

Not necessarily. Especially the latter will usually mean "Make sure some scumbag won't rob you in a way you won't be legally able to prevent." You may be perfectly fine from ethical point of view, but fall under some overreaching law which forbids what you do, even though there's nothing wrong with your specific case.

A boy of 18 years and one month old, having sex with a girl 17 years and 11 months old? Even though they've been a happy couple for past three years? Still illegal.

Want to use a song in your vid, which you know for a fact is public domain because it was written in 17th century, but a recent pop hit included the same musical line and Sony Music claims copyright to it? The law *theoretically* is on your side, but your lawyer will tell you to pick your battles and simply choose some other song.

You sell microwave ovens and you didn't write in the manual "Don't dry your pets in the microwave oven"? Sorry, the court system loves forcing companies to give handouts to terminal idiots.

Re:Legality?

[gcnaddict]

Yahoo EULA under section 2:

You also understand and agree that the Service may include advertisements and that these advertisements are necessary for Yahoo to provide the Service.

Yahoo EULA under section 16:

You agree that Yahoo shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or as the result of the presence of such advertisers on the Service.

Ruling in favor of EULAs: Vernor v. Autodesk

Re:Legality?

[edtice1559]

They aren't denying access. They are requiring that you not use an Ad Blocker. If you are concerned that this would be "insecure," run it in a dedicated VM or dedicated hardware. You have a simple workaround. If it's a free account, this may not even matter since they might owe you nothing. Also it's not a tort since they haven't communicated with your business partner. If they sent your contacts an email saying that you aren't responding to them due to your ad blocker, that might be a tort case. I'm not a lawyer and you shouldn't get legal advice on /. However, what's provided here is certainly better than what you proposed!

Re:Legality?

[King_TJ]

Actually, people quite regularly ask /. for legal advice from what I've seen here over the years. And IMO, why not? It's not like anyone with any sense wouldn't consult a real attorney first if they were really going to take something to court. But I figure they're just putting out "feelers". Some people on here probably are lawyers by profession and others probably went through legal battles already over similar issues. It's useful to get a rough idea of it you have a case worth making the effort to find a good attorney for and pursue.

Re:Legality?

[ftobin]

Ruling in favor of EULAs: Vernor v. Autodesk

Please note such rulings only apply in the U.S.

Re:Legality?

[tehcyder]

I just like it to see all the IANAL disclaimers. No fucking shit, there's me thinking a rambling paragraph by an Anonymous Paranoiac on the internet is as valuable as a practicing lawyer's five hundred an hour advice.

Re:Legality?

[pr0fessor]

In a world where you agree to see advertising for a service instead of paying a subscription the service provider can stop providing ad based service if they are no longer able to make money on it.

There is still more to it than that they also have to make sure they are providing a quality service and the advertising is clean of malware, etc... otherwise they will have a bad reputation and people will leave both the paid and ad based service.

Re: Legality?

[rjstanford]

Ethics? I'm no fan of ads, but I'd say that in this case the people who want to continue using the service that Yahoo! has been providing them while going out of their way to prevent the sole mechanism through which the provider is compensated for providing that service are the ones with the ethical problem here. They were offered a deal (email in exchange for ad views) and are now reneging on their side of the deal, not even offering to move to a paid account to remove the ads.

Re:Legality?

[metrix007]

Oh, please. A website EULA is a complete different thing than a click to agree EULA. And you know this.

Re: Legality?

[tepples]

A boy of 18 years and one month old, having sex with a girl 17 years and 11 months old? Even though they've been a happy couple for past three years? Still illegal.

For one thing, it depends on the state. For another, I thought marriage was an absolute defense to statutory rape.

Re:Legality?

[tepples]

Agreed. You can treat legal questions on SoylentNews, Slashdot, or Law Stack Exchange as "Before I walk into the lawyer's office, what should I know to make the most of the initial consultation?"

Re:Legality?

[HiThere]

I think the IANAL disclaimers are because some places have laws against pretending to practice law when you aren't licensed. The IANAL is anti-lawsuit insurance.

That's just a guess, and that's why I use it when I use it. Also because some people are so Darwin award worthy that they *would* take legal advice from someone unknown over the Internet.

Re:Legality?

[Rakarra]

Please note that Yahoo's email services are located in the United States, and are subject to US law only.
Now Yahoo might operate other country-specific services that are bound by the laws of those countries. yahoo.co.uk for instance would fall specifically under UK law, including various IP laws that hold in Britain.

I'm amused by these various stories though. How do people think these companies are going to make money? Those web mail services cost money to operate. Where is the money supposed to come from? If they're giving you something, they're going to need something in return.

Re:Legality?

[Darinbob]

EULAs are not legally binding in all countries. A contract is not a contract if both parties have not agreed to them, and a "click ok to continue" does not always constitute legal agreement to the terms. The US is beholden to its corporations and not its citizens, so any immoral laws in that country do not necessarily apply elsewhere (and yes, I put most click-to-continue EULAs into the "immoral" category).

Re:Legality?

[Darinbob]

You know, since I have Yahoo as a part of my ISP and is for webmail only, I don't ever recall clicking any accept to any Yahoo EULA anyway. Could they prove it in court? Where is the contract if they are asked to present it in court?

Re:Legality?

[Xest]

The problem is that there's no real agreement. When you put something on the public web it's public, and people can manipulate and view it how they want. If companies want to force agreements they must create login gateways with explicit conduct agreements or a paywall.

The problem is that companies want their cake and they want to eat it too. They want to gain the benefits of the public web such as easy linkability and searchability, but without the downsides - the aforementioned fact that people can do as they will with the content.

The fact is there is value to having your content public on the open web but companies refuse to accept that, they want to pretend there's no value to it and it's wholly a cost, but if that's true then why do they do it? They do it for the likes of the free advertising results from open content search engines like Google give them.

This is where the battle between corporation and users sit on this issue. Users know that companies are benefiting from the web or they wouldn't be there, so they have little sympathy when companies claim they're not benefiting and need more money because the solution is simple - if you think you're not benefiting from the open web then jump behind a paywall and see if your company can afford to survive without those massive benefits the open web gives you.

The web gives public sites a lot for free in terms of traffic and advertising. That is something that would cost a lot (in terms of having to advertise themselves) to reproduce were it not there. If they insist that every user of their site must net them ad revenue then it's not unreasonable that Google also requests there share by demanding a cut of that revenue each time someone clicks a link (even non-sponsored) from Google to their site - Google is after all giving them advertising and page views for free otherwise.

Re:Legality?

[pr0fessor]

The fact is there is value to having your content public on the open web but companies refuse to accept that, they want to pretend there's no value to it and it's wholly a cost, but if that's true then why do they do it? They do it for the likes of the free advertising results from open content search engines like Google give them.

This is a poor assumption, there are plenty of web based only services out there that don't provide a service compelling enough to be able to use a pay model so they use advertising as a means of revenue. People are not going to take up a subscription of $9.99/mo, $4.99/mo, or even $19.99/yr for each service they use because there are just to many. Those businesses that do find value in having a presence on the public web are paying those sites for advertising.

Re:Legality?

[Xest]

"This is a poor assumption, there are plenty of web based only services out there that don't provide a service compelling enough to be able to use a pay model so they use advertising as a means of revenue. People are not going to take up a subscription of $9.99/mo, $4.99/mo, or even $19.99/yr for each service they use because there are just to many."

I agree, but what you're really highlighting here is the underlying problem - the market place is crowded and in a crowded market place profits will always be pushed towards zero with the least competitive going out of business and this is accelerated in a globalised world where Western companies entering such a market place are up against entrepeneurs in low salary 3rd world nations that have inherently lower costs. The problem is that these sites feel they have a right to make large profits, and that's the issue - these companies rather than recognising the reality they're operating in are instead trying to fruitlessly change that reality and yet all they're doing is alienating their users and accelerating their decline towards absolute failure.

So the choices are two fold, accept this isn't the great mythical dot com unicorn land where you get rich by just making a website and the reality is that you'll barely scrape a living and be happy with that because that's just the way it is, and that's what you have to live with, or figure out how to beat the competition and become a top tier site such that you can paywall, or can live with even 90% of your users blocking ads on your site.

You can't change the technology, and you can't change people so your only option is to accept reality and run with it or stay the fuck out of the business and find some other way to make money.

Go back

[markdavis]

This is going to go over like a lead balloon. I know if I was greeted with that on a site I use, I would then start the process of going elsewhere.

They would do far better to just shift to some other way to display the ads using local servers instead of ad networks, if they really find all of this necessary. Oh, and in the process, make sure the ads are small, load quickly, don't pop up or under or on a time delay, have no animation and no sound, and no mouse over effects. Inotherwords, go back to the way things were before people found it necessary to block ads.

Re:Go back

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the thinking is that if you are using AdBlock then you are just a drain on their resources and they would rather you use a different service.

Still, your point about serving better ads is well taken. Its the only real solution to the issue.

Re:Go back

[Dredd13]

And since you:

[a] cost them resources, and
[b] deny them revenue

They:

[c] are actively trying to *encourage* you to go elsewhere and be a drain on someone else's resources.

Re:Go back

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am altering the deal Pray I don't alter it any further." -- Yahoo

Re:Go back

[DriveDog]

I would be willing to flag Yahoo as an exception to ad blocking IF the ads were tolerable—basically what you said, no animation, sound, pop-under/over, mouseover, etc. And the percent of real estate taken by the ads needs to be reasonable. I'm not anti-ad, just anti-obnoxious ad ("obnoxious" being in the eye of the beholder, yes). But as of reading this piece of news, I'm already considering what impacts I'll see if/when I abandon Yahoo.

Re:Go back

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo's experiment might be met with a lead balloon reaction, but what they are doing is a demonstration to other sites. Most sites rely heavily on ad revenue to be able to maintain a free-to-view site. Some sites, including the NYT and WSJ have implemented paywalls, with varying amounts of success. I can see many site owners being inspired by Yahoo, with the thinking that "those that block ads are freeloading on our site anyway, and it costs us if they stay -- who cares if blocking them forces them away?" A more sophisticated implementation would give users the choice to either disable the ad block, or pay what the ad revenue would have been.

Once a critical mass of sites implement this technology, you are still free to "go elsewhere," but there will be few elsewheres to go. Sure, you could just say "to hell with this, I'm forming my own free alternative site." But you will quickly find what most site owners already know: running a web site costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. Ads are a great way to make money without having to charge customers... until that ad revenue dries up because of too many of your visitors using ad blockers. There are no free lunches.

Re:Go back

[Barny]

I checked, their ad-free version is not available in my region and, even if you have that, it only disables the sidebar ads, not the ones that are in your mail feed.

Re:Go back

[Motherfucking Shit]

I agree entirely when it comes to "tolerable" and "reasonable" and "obnoxious." Even if we completely ignore the fact that Yahoo's advertising network has been repeatedly compromised and used to serve up malware, the "legitimate" ads they display are from the gutter of the internet.

Going to any Yahoo site with ads enabled is like visiting a newsstand in the red light district. Lots of pictures of scantily clad women being used to promote something entirely unrelated; that's a grenade waiting to go off if you visit Yahoo at work. Lots of pictures of gross skin conditions and other medical problems. Lots of click-bait captions ("Surprising Ways Coconut Oil Can Change Your Life!," "20 product features you never knew existed!"). Lots of trashy, scammy sounding ads that remind you of the junk you see on TV at 3AM ("Search For Mesothelioma Lawyers," "How Much Can You Save By Refinancing?"). And on many Yahoo properties, each page will load a dozen or more 300x156 images all down the side of the page. Seriously, fire up a sandbox VM and go scroll through this page on Yahoo News without an ad blocker, it's unfuckingreal!

Yahoo Mail also insists that you enter your cellphone number in order to create an email account. This is a hard requirement and can't be bypassed. Gmail will try, and if you don't enter your number they'll remind you at every opportunity, but as of yet won't force you to link your email account to your pocket government GPS tracker. I know a lot of folks are attached to long-held @yahoo.com addresses but surely nobody new is signing up for this shit.

Re:Go back

[Merk42]

Except Yahoo isn't the one that altered the deal.
"Free" email paid through ads was always the case
It is the people using Ad-Blockers that are altering the deal.

Re:Go back

[Darinbob]

I am not denying them revenue. I am paying real money to my ISP and Yahoo webmail is a part of what I am paying for. I am well within my rights to block their ads.

Browser ends and a site begins?

[AHuxley]

So how far down does a site get into a browser to understand what a browser is doing on another users computer and that users own OS?

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't. We now start to develop blockers that accept the connection to the ad site, slurp the data, run the JavaCrap that comes with it in a different sandbox with CoW access to the page sandbox, in case the ad wants to cross-check something, and show a blank frame where the ad should show. Arms race continues, problem solved for now.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[amiga3D]

Eventually they'll require root access to your computer.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Anonymous Coward]

, problem solved for now.

Not really, a major reason for using ad blocker, especially on mobile devices and capped/metered Internet is to not download the ad or script data at all.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[luvirini]

Another major reason is the speed. So many web sites are so much faster with adds blocked. I am not talking about small change, but something that is clearly visible.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[AHuxley]

Hi AC re "Is there a browser plugin that does that already?"
"Six browser plug-ins that protect your privacy" (Oct 17, 2014)
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
"The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy" (8/31/15)
http://lifehacker.com/the-best...

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Another major reason is the speed. So many web sites are so much faster with adds blocked. I am not talking about small change, but something that is clearly visible.

Right. Occasionally I'll see a "please disable your ad blocker" notice on sites that I like and that I use all the time. And I'll say, okay, that's reasonable, they have to make money to keep the lights on. So I'll disable the ad blocker and reload. Aaaand the site no longer loads, not even within (seriously) two full minutes. And so I say, if this is what it takes to keep the lights on, I'd be happier in the dark. So I turn the ad blocker off, and reload the same page, in milliseconds.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Slashdot Junky]

I did run for a long time at with a similar solution. I did this up until I installed an ad-blocker for the first time back over the summer. I used the HOSTS file to point a long list of domains to a Linux box on my network that served a page through Apache via the 404 error. The error occured, because the ad's URL was never valid when applied to my server. The page used JavaScript to match the iFrame's parent's background color and showed "AD BLOCKED". While this didn't work for all ads, it did for many and improved my experience.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[desdinova 216]

careful, mentioning a Hosts file tends to summon APK

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Slashdot Junky]

I block ads, because they lessen too much the user experience. Early on, ads weren't a nuisance, really, because we were only subjected to mostly static banner ads. Ads have evolved to be much more active employing animation, video, and/or audio. They have also gotten larger and incorporate other nuisance-causing tactics like page-over and content-shifting mechanisms to increase impressions. The videos in particular, especially the auto-run videos are the most annoying to me and resource demanding. Ads using audio are the runner-up. I am often listening to music through the computer as I work at the computer, so the audio interferes with this. No, I am not listing to ad-supported streaming services. I actually buy CDs and listen to the ripped MP3s I've created from them.

I wish we'd move away from the free, ad-supported, and data-sharing business model and find a way for the content and services to be pay-access-only without subscriptions. Yes, I do realize that this means many sites and services, especially those catering to a niche, will be lost. I do know that some are subsidized by revenue earned elsewhere. In the end, I may decide the loss isn't worth the improvement in user experience gained through the removal of ads or at least the pull-back of ads. Society is already paying indirectly for all this "free" stuff, because we are paying for something that funds the marketing budgets that are buying the ad space.

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[Darinbob]

Except that this still consumes the bandwidth. This is why I use adblockers to make my network go faster and the pages load quickly. Why should I download several megabytes of useless data just to see a three line email reply?

Re:Browser ends and a site begins?

[BrinkeGuthrie]

Another major reason is the speed. So many web sites are so much faster with adds blocked. I am not talking about small change, but something that is clearly visible.

Right. Occasionally I'll see a "please disable your ad blocker" notice on sites that I like and that I use all the time. And I'll say, okay, that's reasonable, they have to make money to keep the lights on. So I'll disable the ad blocker and reload. Aaaand the site no longer loads, not even within (seriously) two full minutes. And so I say, if this is what it takes to keep the lights on, I'd be happier in the dark. So I turn the ad blocker off, and reload the same page, in milliseconds.

CBS.com cough cough

Grammar like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is what's effecting my move to another news site.

Re:Grammar like this...

[JoeyRox]

Submitter here. The only cringeworthy mistake I see in the grammar was my insertion of a superfluous subject complement in the second sentence (extra "that" in bold below), esp. in terms of flow from the first sentence. What others am I missing? Full summary below:

Yahoo is running an A/B test that blocks access to Yahoo email if the site detects that the user is running an Ad Blocker. Yahoo says that this a trial rather than a new policy, effecting only a "small number" of users. Those lucky users are greeted with a message that reads "Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail." Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.

Re:Grammar like this...

[JoeyRox]

The second subject complement in the first sentence should be removed as well (bold words below):

Yahoo is running an A/B test that blocks access to Yahoo email if the site detects that the user is running an Ad Blocker. Yahoo says that this a trial rather than a new policy, effecting only a "small number" of users. Those lucky users are greeted with a message that reads "Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail." Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.

Re:Grammar like this...

[JoeyRox]

Haha, was too busy looking for grammar construction mistakes and totally missed the obvious effect vs affect mistake as well. touche.

Re:Grammar like this...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Now that is funny. Effect is the correct word. It isn't modifying his move to another website (affecting), it is causing (effecting) it.

Oy vey!

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

"Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld" It's like a perfect storm of proper nouns!

IMAP and POP for Yahoo Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

IMAP and POP for Yahoo Mail

When you set up an email app to access your email account, you're asked to pick between POP or IMAP access. Here are the settings you'll need, and the differences between these two ways of accessing your Yahoo Mail.
IMAP server settings

IMAP allows 2-way synching, which means everything you do remotely also affects your Yahoo Mail account.

Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server

        Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com
        Port - 993
        Requires SSL - Yes

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server

        Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
        Port - 465 or 587
        Requires SSL - Yes
        Requires authentication - Yes

Your login info

        Email address - Your full email address (name@domain.com)
        Password - Your account's password
        Requires authentication - Yes

If you need specific instructions for your mail client or app, reach out to its manufacturer.
POP server settings

POP uses 1-way synching, which downloads your email as a copy into the app, allowing you to move and delete them in the app without affecting the original emails in your Yahoo Mail account.

Incoming Mail (POP) Server

        Server - pop.mail.yahoo.com
        Port - 995
        Requires SSL - Yes

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server

        Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
        Port - 465 or 587
        Requires SSL - Yes
        Requires TLS - Yes (if available)
        Requires authentication - Yes

Your login info

        Email address - Your full email address (name@domain.com.)
        Password - Your account's password.
        Requires authentication - Yes

Re:IMAP and POP for Yahoo Mail

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Thanks, very informative. I've been meaning to set this up, only since about... oh, 1997 or so. But accessing my mail through the interwebsheets has just been too convenient.

Checked my yahoo

[present_arms]

And no problem getting in at all, with no-script, ABP etc enabled.. then again it's possibly for IP's that are US centric.

Re:Checked my yahoo

[Dog-Cow]

It's also only for people whose reading comprehension actually is measurable.

Two Words:

[apcullen]

No Script. That is all.

Re:Two Words:

[Anonymous Coward]

umatrix does everything that noscript does but has a way better interface, and less overhead

Re:Two Words:

[Crowd Computing]

This will only work if the site has a non-JavaScript version. Most sites that have some sort of anti-adblocking mechanism in place require Javascript to be functional. Without Javascript you get served a page that asks you to enable Javascript or disable adblocking.

Re:Two Words:

[Dutch Gun]

I'd have agreed with you a few years ago. Yes, you can stop nearly all web-based attacks by blocking scripting, but you do so at the expense of blocking nearly all web functionality. These days, too much of the web is just utterly broken without scripting enabled. I was tired of constantly fiddling with it, trying to find the content delivery network to allow so the site would actually work.

I recently replace noscript with ublock-origin. Scripting is no longer the attack vector of choice... just an enabling technology. Nowadays, malvertising is a far bigger threat, and adblock software can also help a fairly substantial list of known bad sites as well using blacklists.

Re:Two Words:

[Rakarra]

I'd have agreed with you a few years ago. Yes, you can stop nearly all web-based attacks by blocking scripting, but you do so at the expense of blocking nearly all web functionality. These days, too much of the web is just utterly broken without scripting enabled. I was tired of constantly fiddling with it, trying to find the content delivery network to allow so the site would actually work.

I could imagine one of the biggest time-sinks would be determining if the ad-blocker/javascript-blocker is effing up the site, or if the site is legitimately broken. I don't use any sort of ad-blocker or javascript filters, and I see so many major sites out there with bad scripting that I wouldn't ever be able to tell if I was blocking something important.

Modify ad bockers

[John Allsup]

A simple hack for ad blockers, though this will require a few hacks to browsers, is to display ads with 0% opacity, and absolute position them in a place that can't be seen. With a few hacks to the browser, what you want to do is to have the rendering engine render everything as usual off screen, and then mirror the elements into a second page with the ads rendered invisible, such that javascript running on the page will see the off-screen page, possibly with simulated mouse and keyboard activity based upon what the actual user is doing (filter out keystrokes other than cursor keys). But sites powered by advertising need to learn that they must adopt conventions that keep advertising reasonable and reasonably unintrusive. If they can't make ends meet doing that, get off the web.

Re:Modify ad bockers

[tepples]

display ads with 0% opacity

But then you burn 10 MB of your 5 GB/mo data allowance displaying a video ad on a page whose body is otherwise 50 kB.

Re:Modify ad bockers

[Dutch Gun]

You're presuming that some of us block ads because we simply don't like seeing them displayed. I block ads because they're dangerous. I never bothered with ad blocking before malvertising became more prevalent.

Re:Modify ad bockers

[thegarbz]

That bypasses three of the great things about adblockers:

1. Malware will now get through.
2. Page loading times will go back to being abysmal.
3. Datausage will go up.

Hope more companies do this...

[Kaitiff]

so that just maybe people will wake up to the world we live in. We've given over most of our rights and just expect that the corporations are some benign entity that just can't wait to do something else for us. A few more blatant slaps across the face would do people good I say.

Can we get the cell phone companies in on this too please? Maybe the banks too?

Re:Hope more companies do this...

[Mashiki]

Great, so I'll expect a consumers bill of rights to pop up saying that any company forthwith that knowingly or unknowingly serves ads which infect a machine with form of malware/keylogger/botnet/ransomware/etc are responsible for damages, removal, and restoration of said individuals software/documents/etc, plus a min. $500 fine payable to said person for time lost.

Re: Hiding AdBlock usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only cows use AdBlock. Are you a cow, MOOOOoooooooo?

Those in the know use APKs HOSTS file generator.

queue the next level of ad blocking

[DevilM]

Soon the ad blockers are going to be simulating that the user saw the ad without actually showing it.

Re:queue the next level of ad blocking

[AHuxley]

Yes was thinking that, some form of VM that projects back what every site needs to see down to an OS level but then transforms the browser for the user.
A site would see the perfect browser, OS, no blocking, everything displayed. The user sees the site as selected in the settings.

Re:queue the next level of ad blocking

[Mister Transistor]

One of them used to; I can't remember if it was AdBlock or NoScript, but one of them had a "load ads but don't display" mode instead of the usual "deny ads completely" mode.

It was for sites that could detect whether or not the ad components were accepted for download by your machine - which I remember a few sites did early on, even before this whole war got rolling. Not many but enough did, they felt that option was necessary, and I remember having to turn it on (off?) because at least one of the sites I visited regularly required it.

I just went and looked at the ABP and NoScript options and I don't seem to be able to find that feature any more, so either they removed it or turned it on full-time. I'm guessing it was the latter, but somehow the sites can still detect whether or not you are using some kind of ad-blocking technology.

Yahoo is well within its rights to do so...

[DNX Blandy]

And I'm well within my rights to change my email provder and close my Yahoo account, (I don't have one but I would if I did). They need to understand that users do not like being told what to do, and I certainly don't in particular. If all email providers go the same way, I'll setup my own mail server again like I used to many years ago. Easy to do.

Re:Yahoo is well within its rights to do so...

[DNX Blandy]

You're an idiot you Anonymous Coward. It's almost like you are saying it's fine what they are doing. Ads are a plague upon the internet... they have gone out-of-control completely.

Well done Marissa!

[hcs_$reboot]

Marissa Mayer was an executive at Google. She went to Yahoo to get all their remaining users to move to gmail (why were they still using yahoo is an interesting question that's not in the scope of this post). Well done Marissa, we hope your bonus will be significant when you'll be back to Google.

Re:Well done Marissa!

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Yahoo to get all their remaining users to move to gmail (why were they still using yahoo is an interesting question that's not in the scope of this post).

I have a GMail account, but my Yahoo address is still my primary one. Partly because, well, it always has been. But also, why switch, really? For one, I like my email like a grizzled veteran of the Vietnam War likes his car radio: just regular, dammit.

But also, Google and Yahoo are both frankly villainous companies hell-bent on using their privileged knowledge of your internet activities to track your every move. And Google is way, way better at it. Way. So I'd prefer not to give them any more advantages than I have to. For me, it's basically a choice between Real Historical Hitler and the cartoon Hitler from a inexplicably insensitive box of Japanese noodles.

A-ffecting. Jeez.

[wonkey_monkey]

effecting only a "small number" of users

You need to lern some properly English.

Re:A-ffecting. Jeez.

[antdude]

So do you! :P

Re:And nothing of value was lost.

[Marginal Coward]

This is just one more way to remind their remaining customers that it's time to move on.

Indeed, Captain. They've tried foisting numerous senseless changes on users. They've tried making the client dead slow. They've tried service outages. Since all that hasn't worked, maybe this will finally alienate the technical cognoscenti who use Ad Block.

A/B testing

[adam.jimenez]

So Yahoo are A/B testing their AB testing, got it.

Just try it

[AndyKron]

Block my mail and I'll just stop going to Yahoo altogether. I have Thunderbird.

Good for Yahoo

[silas_moeckel]

It will help get those people who refuse to move off yahoo. They are about on par with people still using aol addresses.

Since my company runs an ad-blocker/net-nanny

[mpercy]

I have no choice in the matter, so I will be unable to get my yahoo email. The last reason I had for using yahoo just went away (I've had a yahoo email account for a *very* long time).

Ads from yahoo has a bad rep.

[fuzzyf]

Did they forget this alreay?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Or maybe they had an epiphany?
CEO: "What do you mean some of our users didn't get infected?"

Re:Ads from yahoo has a bad rep.

[BronsCon]

I figure I've got about a decade of work product on my computer. If my machine gets infected and that gets stolen, is Yahoo! willing to pay me... oh, let's see... 10 years, that's 520 weeks at 40hr/wk (being generous, most weeks are closer to 60 with some topping 80+), at my high-volume billable rate of $50/hr... 520 * 40 * 50 = $1.04 million? Oh, plus a day's work that will be lost to nuke-and-pave, another day to configure all the software I reinstalled the day prior, and another day to restore my backups, so tack another $1200 on there. And if my backups are damaged, tack on another decade of payment to cover my time to redo that work; if those backups simply don't exist, then, instead tack on two weeks of lost work ($4000) while I take the system off my network, go through everything and back up whatever's clean make note of what's not salvageable, a percentage of $1.04 million equal to the percentage of work that must be redone, in addition to the time to restore those backups after nuke-and-pave.

Unless Yahoo! is willing to accept potential liability of up to $2,085,200 (plus court costs, legal fees, and my billable rate for work lost having to sue them over it, let's just bump that number up to $3mil since I won't cheap out on my lawyer), they should allow me access to the email account I already have with them, without requiring me to view their ads, which have a history of carrying malware. At the very least, they should provide a list of alternate providers who don't block users of ad blockers, assistance in migrating to one of those providers, free forwarding from the old address to the new address for at least a year (preferably 5-10) and, if the newly chosen service is not free, cover the cost for that same period. After all, it's not like I can just stop using my Yahoo! mail, there is a fair bit of work involved in doing that and I would need access to my Yahoo! mail (without the ads that have proven to be dangerous) in during that time.

I say would because the real reason I can't just stop using my Yahoo! mail is that I don't use Yahoo! mail, or any other Yahoo! services, on the off chance that one of their potentially malicious ads slips past my ad blocker.

Re:Ads from yahoo has a bad rep.

[BronsCon]

You come off as an entitled dick with a huge case of unwarranted self importance.

Why? Because I realize that's not how things work and, as a result, avoid putting myself in situations where I might be liable for the misdeeds of others? You see, an entitled dick would go ahead and put himself in that position, then throw a bitch fit when things didn't go his way; again, I simply avoid the situation altogether rather than making unreasonable demands. My previous post is an example of such an unreasonable demand, with the explanation that I avoid putting myself in a position to make said demand by not using the service. Furthermore, an individual with a huge case of unwarranted self importance might be inclined to reply to a post on a public forum, somewhere like Slashdot for example, without reading the entire thing first; this often leads them to take what they have read entirely out of context and say something foolish, as you're done here. Your only saving grace, in that regard, is that you posted anonymously and didn't sign your message, while someone with aforementioned huge case of unwarranted self importance would do at least one of those things.

Bully for Yahoo

[psherman2001]

....whereas I find many ads obnoxious and the tracking going on kinda creepy, if everyone blocked ads there would be virtually nothing online "for free."

All the "I'll take my business elsewhere" folks are in for a rude surprise when they realize all the small and innovative content generators don't have the free time to generate quality content for nothing in return. All that will be left is larger companies that can bankroll long-term investment and paywalls.

Re:Bully for Yahoo

[nickersonm]

You apparently don't remember that the internet existed in useful form before the prevalence of intrusive advertising.

Re:Bully for Yahoo

[PrimaryConsult]

Youtube still pays for that small and innovative content... I think this is why how-tos have gone from blog posts to video format in recent years. While a bit annoying (much easier to scan a text & screenshots document than sit through a video), not the end of the world.

Re:Bully for Yahoo

[honestmonkey]

I just wanted to say "Yeah-bo" or "THIS" or whatever the prevalent form of agreement is. I can do without most any site. If they can do without me, fine.

I am going to a site to download files, that's it. If I want files 1, 2 and 3, and they say you must take 4, 5 and 6 as well, at that point I decide whether it's worth it to me to do so.

It's weird to me. This is like getting a newspaper and having someone watch me read it, noting that my eyes didn't linger over the ad on page 7 long enough, so they aren't going to deliver the paper the next day. Not the best analogy, but something like that.

Re:Bully for Yahoo

[tepples]

Have you tried leaving a comment on each such video asking for a transcript?

Re:Bully for Yahoo

[psherman2001]

Actually, I remember the early internet quite well.

It was NOWHERE near as useful as it can be today.
(But I do understand how you and I and others can get tired of intrusive ads, as opposed to something like a non-tracking text ad or banner.)

What I am more tired of is so many of the folks online who argue from extremes... and like to insult people who don't agree with them instead of trying to make a legitimate point.

I also have little patients for those who expect everything for free. Welfare used to be a dirty word to proud, working folks. Now it seems so many people aren't embarrassed to get something without working for it, they actually don the label of "leech" as if it were a badge of honor.

Re:Hiding AdBlock usage?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Yes, it's called anti-adblock killer, but it requires Greasemonkey or another script engine and is overall difficult to set up. Not a very well working solution yet but I hope it improves over time.

All while adding ads ...

[gstoddart]

I'm stuck with a Yahoo email because of my ISP. I tolerate it, but I'm not overly invested in it.

I haven't seen the blocking ... if they do that to me I'll ignore them.

But what I have seen is them adding to the number of ad-sites embedded in my email by quite a lot lately -- there's now almost 20 external domains they pull in which I'm blocking in just my email. I understand Yahoo is increasingly desperate to pretend they are relevant and to bring in revenue, but it's not my damned problem. I didn't choose to use Yahoo, my ISP made them my email because they didn't want to provide it themselves.

So, Yahoo is something I use at my sufferance ... and my patience with them is growing thin.

They're not that good, I don't use them for anything but that specific email that I'm supposed to keep for my ISP. They keep adding ad sites which I keep blocking. If they block me because of that ... well, they'll cease to exist to me, really.

Yahoo is a company which really only lives on its own inertia of people who already have Yahoo accounts. Their painful decline into oblivion means they're being bigger assholes in trying to keep revenue.

And when that backfires on them, they might just discover how irrelevant they've become.

Re:All while adding ads ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you do know that you don't *have* to use your ISP's provided e-mail system, right?

Re:All while adding ads ...

[quenda]

I'm stuck with a Yahoo email because of my ISP.

I find that very hard to believe. Is your ISP blocking all other SMTP and IMAP traffic? Blocking gmail and hotmail (or whatever MS calls it now)?

Re:All while adding ads ...

[geantvert]

You say that your email was chosen by your ISP. why?
My ISP also gave me an email address but I never used it.
The email address is not something that is linked to your internet access.
You are free to use whatever email provider you like.

Re:All while adding ads ...

[edtice1559]

I hope this gets a +5 Informative mod since you are the only guy in history to use your ISP-provided email address and, therefore, uniquely qualified to comment on this situation!

Re:All while adding ads ...

[tepples]

Is your ISP blocking all other SMTP and IMAP traffic?

No, but I imagine that some ISPs no longer offer their own SMTP or IMAP server, instead relying on Yahoo or someone else like that. It started with Usenet, and now it may have spread to email.

Re:All while adding ads ...

[Motherfucking Shit]

"Stuck" may have been hyperbole on his part, but I'm in a similar situation so I sympathize.

20 years ago I had a dialup internet connection from BellSouth. The associated email address was, and still is is, my first name @bellsouth.net. I've had that email address for two decades, two moves, four jobs, and several ISP changes. When I no longer had a need for a backup dialup ISP and I stopped paying BellSouth (AT&T at that point), they let me keep the email account for free. That email address is known to most of my family, friends, coworkers, former coworkers, and various other business associates and acquaintances. It's been on my resume and my business cards. It's been used to register for numerous services I've long since forgotten about but might want to access again someday. I haven't used it as my primary email in years, and I don't usually give it out to anyone anymore, but it's been in circulation for so long that I have to check it, so that it stays active and so that I don't miss anything interesting or important.

AT&T offloaded its customers' email accounts from their own interface to Yahoo several years ago. I normally use an IMAP client instead of the web interface, but that's beside the point: there are a lot of people who are somewhat involuntarily attached to Yahoo Mail, either an account they created @yahoo.com years ago, or with their current or former ISP email address. Yes, people could just abandon those addresses and never interact with Yahoo Mail again, but that isn't a reasonable option to me, all things considered. I am, in a way, "stuck" with that address until I die or AT&T decides to shut it down, whichever comes first.

Re:All while adding ads ...

[thegarbz]

Don't ISPs and Yahoo typically provide POP3 / IMAP services? I've been a yahoo mail user for many years, but I honestly couldn't tell you what their website looks like.

Re:All while adding ads ...

[quenda]

The associated email address was, and still is is, my first name @bellsouth.net. I've had that email address for two decades,

So set up email forwarding.
https://www.google.com.au/sear...

I am, in a way, "stuck" with that address until I die

And do you still get snail mail forwarded from the house you lived in 20 years ago?

Great

[koan]

Another nail in the coffin for Yahoo.

Affecting

[Chris Mattern]

"Affecting only a 'small number' of users", not "effecting."

Re:Affecting

[JoeyRox]

Ugh, my bad. What's worse is I'm always pointing out that particular mistake to others. Doh!

Re: Hiding AdBlock usage?

[Crowd Computing]

I'm not a Javascript expert but it appears that OS-level hosts file ad-blocking is already detected by the more sophisticated adblock detectors.

Would they stop ads for a payment?

[JoeDaddyZZZ]

Will they offer a no ad version for a price? I would pay a small amount to get the full page back and not have ads.

Why would anyone think it was not legal?

[damn_registrars]

I don't see how anyone could possibly think of this as not being something they can legally do. Nobody is forced to use yahoo mail, if they don't like how the site is set up they are free to go use a different free email service instead.

Yahoo is a 4 letter word

[BoRegardless]

D E A D

They are well within their right, but . . .

[josquin9]

my first thought is that this is evidence of a finance department coup meant to oust an ineffective marketing department.

Bad idea that shows no understanding of the marketplace in which they operate. I feel confident that there were better ways that they could have chosen to wind down a non-profitable service that would have had less of a negative impact on their overall corporate reputation.

Yahoo who?

[WhiteTree11]

What is a Yahoo? Why is this news? And people still using their services would obviously be behind a corporate firewall accessing them via an email cleint. This drives away the casual users willing to give them a chance instead. Smart Move guys!! I give them 5 years.

Title incorrect

[DeVilla]

Yahoo openly hostile toward security conscious users.

Yahoo! Mail...Site?

[ImprovOmega]

Wait...people actually still use web-based email? I thought everyone got their messages on their smartphones these days. I almost never use the web interface except for those rare and few occasions where I need to send a file from my computer specifically. And even then I'm apt to just punt it to Dropbox and send it from my phone anyway...

Re:Yahoo! Mail...Site?

[Cro Magnon]

Yes, I do. I haven't used Yahoo for ages, but I often get on gmail. My phone is fine for reading emails, but it's a lot easier to respond to them on a real computer, rather than the phone or tablet.

ad cappers not ad blockers

[goombah99]

What I'd like is ad-capper instead of an ad-blocker. I'm very happy to get some ads. But if the ad-content is more than 50% of the bandwidth to load the page then it's time to block the ad's above that limit. A lot below that then it won't change the page load time.

Re:ad cappers not ad blockers

[Rakarra]

I make it a personal policy to allow for image ads, but flash and html5 video ads get automatically blocked. That is BS no one should have to put up with.

So ad providers, if you'd like me to see your ads: don't make them videos. Don't make them heavy.
Ad providers and website hosters: if you don't want your customers to get twitchy and want to block ads, make sure the servers are fast enough to serve them immediately, and don't resize/redraw web pages when the ads finally load. I feel like ragequitting a tiny bit every time I try to click on a link and suddenly an ad appears and shifts up/down the page and I end up clicking something else instead.

Re:ad cappers not ad blockers

[spire3661]

" But if the ad-content is more than 50% of the bandwidth to load the page then it's time to block the ad's above that limit"

This is like saying 'we should price software per line of code'.

I'm seeing a golden opportunity

[grimmjeeper]

Everyone complains about intrusive and malware infested advertisement. But I see that as an opportunity.

There is a lot of potential money to be made if a company were started that would screen the advertisements to not be intrusive or full of malware before providing them. They could refuse to serve flash based ads. They could be mobile aware to send only lower bandwidth ads to mobile devices. They could reject ads that push themselves in front of the page's contents. Sure, the extra work would cost money to implement and reduce revenue but people would be less likely to want to reject ads entirely if the ad provider did a little vetting of the ads beforehand. And fewer people running ad blockers would increase the number of ads served which would balance out the cost of vetting the ads.

I blocked when ads showed up in Subject list

[dloflin]

I didn't mind the sidebar ads in Yahoo Mail, but when they started putting ads in the list of email looking like another email - that's when I'd had enough.

So if they want to get rid of THAT one practice, I'll gladly turn off my ad-blocker.

But I like Yahoo's email interface much better than Gmail or almost any others. Especially the ease of moving messages to folders.

Re:I blocked when ads showed up in Subject list

[dysmal]

Agreed. I can handle some ads. Really. I'm OK with some. They happen. I get it.

Putting ads in the list of email that look like email was just a dick sneeze move.

In the end, Yahoo and everyone else that feeds us ads needs to understand that a lot of people are going to ad blockers because they're sick of getting visually assaulted every time they load a website. Geocities is dead and gone. Why is it that every site is trying to look like them with ads everywhere and auto playing crap?

I feel like making screenshots in ELinks

[tepples]

Without Javascript you get served a page that asks you to enable Javascript or disable adblocking.

Can you give examples, so that I can make some screenshots in ELinks or w3m? (From things other than DHTML games please.)

Re:I feel like making screenshots in ELinks

[Blue Stone]

I was looking at one yesterday regarding this story.

Have a look at blid.de (it's in German) - it does exactly what OP was talking about.

Pay per bit

[tepples]

So how are you "going to be simulating" the download of a video advertisement without actually billing the user's data plan?

Re:Pay per bit

[tepples]

This works fine until ad frameworks start hashing the downloaded video.

Re:Pay per bit

[tepples]

Your suggested browser countermeasure: Have a server on a cheaper connection download the video.
Server countermeasure: The server could show the article only if the page view, the ad framework script view, and the video view came from the same IP address.
Possible browser countermeasure: Have a server on a cheaper connection download everything, run the scripts there, and forward them to the browser, as in Opera Mini.
Server countermeasure: Block the IP addresses of known such servers. Video streaming services already do this for VPNs used to evade territorial exclusivity. Or use rapid DOM updates that are efficient when run locally but create an inefficient level of traffic when the DOM changes are passed back and forth over the wire. Or quiz the user on the content of the video ad.

Paywalling IMAP access

[tepples]

Block my mail and I'll just stop going to Yahoo altogether.

But how would you notify all your contacts, who have whitelisted your Yahoo address in their spam filters, of your new From address?

I have Thunderbird.

When Gmail upgraded its security measures last year, Outlook users were shown an error message directing them to the webmail interface. Yahoo could make IMAP a premium feature, at which point you'd get an analogous error message when attempting to access your account with Thunderbird until you subscribe.

Re:Y'all should look up how to do client access

[tepples]

Next month's story:
Yahoo Ends Free IMAP Access, Charges $19.99 a Year to Restore

Great Firewall

[tepples]

it appears that OS-level hosts file ad-blocking is already detected by the more sophisticated adblock detectors.

But how would such a detector reliably detect the difference between /etc/hosts and DNS blocking performed by an ISP in a country with mandatory censorware laws?

Oh wait, I can think of two ways. One is that /etc/hosts blocks only one hostname at a time, not randomly generated names in a domain. The other is DNS resolution time, as several queries of a multi-million-line APK-scale hosts file will take several seconds to complete, unless the operating system's resolver uses an efficient data structure (which none do as far as I know).

Mother Effing Tool Confuser

[tepples]

Does the ad-block also block screen readers?

If the screen reader correctly interprets JavaScript, probably not. The site Mother Effing Tool Confuser was designed to convince developers of accessibility checkers that modern screen readers actually execute JavaScript.

Re:Phone required for new accounts

[tepples]

I thought creating a Gmail account also required a phone number, as shown in this screenshot.

Re:Ad blocking is not the solution

[tepples]

Only really two options for web sites, run ads to pay for the web site. Or charge end users for access and providing the site.

Or do 2 without locking visitors out. Structure your company as a non-profit public benefit corporation and rely on donations to keep the lights on. It's working for Wikipedia and SoylentNews.

Strange

[nospam007]

What I don't understand, is that people who are savvy enough to use an adblocker aren't savvy enough to use a fucking mail program?

Re:Strange

[Stan92057]

And when too many people start doing that they will complain or take that option away and yahoo for years didn't allow pop gmail did though for free. Whats wrong is yahoo any the rest can collect and spy on what add-ons we have on our PC and that's really none of their business that that IMO needs to be fixed at the browser level. How can we stop web sites/anyone from collecting our browser data? PC data?

Shakespeare the Lawyers

[ThatsNotPudding]

Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.

And when the first ad bots start spewing malware on Yahoo email users, no doubt this dickhead will be the first to say, "Yahoo is not responsible". Yeah; all they did was cash the checks.

It will be less cute when gmail does it

[alispguru]

Google is no doubt watching this experiment very carefully...

Does not compute

[TigerPlish]

I have a Yahoo email account, because the ISP I had when I started in florida -- BellSouth -- later AT&T -- outsourced their email to yahoo.

I still have an ATT account, which is still my BellSouth email address.

I'm paying for this so-called Yahoo email.. Which is why Yahoo can go fuck themselves into oblivion, they seem to be very good at that.

I wonder if they'd be able to detect this for FireFox Mozilla Yahoo Ad Hide Plugin or for Chrome

Yeah, I use that on top of AdBlockPlus.

Re:I Can't Understand You

[Rakarra]

If he's anything like me, he's more than capable of typing coherently when he has a cock in his mouth.

Inevitable pro-tip...

[zarmanto]

Pro-tip: This requirement is very easy to circumvent.

1) Open an account with another webmail provider who doesn't have these requirements, (such as gmail.com)
2) Configure that alternate account to access your Yahoo account via POP3,
3) Never visit those yahoos again.

Problem solved.

Hash the video

[tepples]

Then replace the hash function with one that always returns the correct answer.

Not if the hash is salted, such as including a unique ID in each copy of the video stream.

the thing is, the blockers have the advantage because the person who is doing the blocking has control over the machine.

And the server has control over what it requires before it will provide the key to decrypt an article past the first paragraph.

Arijit Singh Nonstop

[thesongspk.in]

Arijit Singh is an Indian playback singer and a music programmer. Born in Jiaganj, Murshidabad, West Bengal, his career began upon participating in the reality show Fame Gurukul, which he lost the finals http://thesongspk.in/best-of-a...

Another mass exodus of yahoo users will soon begin

[anti-disney]

Looks like even more yahoo users will become former yahoo users in another exodus that may be as bad as the first mass exodus of users when they changed their email interface and didn't listen to user complaints. Who will Marissa Mayers blame this time? As Mr. Bonnefarte (or whatever his name is) said when they changed their email interface and customers complained "Some people need to be kicked in the groin to appreciate good software design". Could Mr. Bonnefarte be next to be fired or forced to resign? Are they going to help users who get infected with malware from a flash advertisement? A lot of users disable flash and ads not only for the ads being annoying but also because of security concerns. In addition, animated ads steal precious bandwidth that some people cannot spare since they are stuck with a 1.5 Mpbs internet connection or even a dial-up connection.