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Yahoo Disables Automatic Email Forwarding Feature, Making It Difficult For Users To Leave (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the good-timing dept.

After it was revealed that Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence agencies, now's as good of time as any to leave Yahoo Mail. However, the company has made it more difficult to leave by disabling the automatic email forwarding feature. Reuters reports: While those who have set up forwarding in the past are unaffected, users who would want to leave following recent hacking and surveillance revelations are struggling to shift to rival services, the AP reported on Monday. The company has been under scrutiny from investors after disclosing last month that at least 500 million user accounts were stolen from its network in 2014. The AP said that several users were leaving or had already left the service because of the negative headlines. The company's website says that the "automatic email forwarding" feature is under development and has been temporarily disabled.

7 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. the kiss of death by speedlaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I still suffer from a verizon email address from three ISP's ago. I now host my own....email is too important to trust gmail OR Yahoo OR anyone else.

    1. Re: the kiss of death by corychristison · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is really the only way forward.

      It's kind of funny how it's coming full circle.
      Way back in the day it was common to host your own email service. Then the ISPs started to push their own services included "for free" with internet service.
      Then the common "free" providers cropped up (hotmail, yahoo, then eventually gmail) as a way to not get locked in to your ISP provided email. Now people are having a hard time getting away from the free services that they once loved because people are now realizing you cannot trust anyone and are going back to hosting their own email.

      This has largely been made possible with the commoditization of "virtual private servers" and easy/free tutorials and solutions to setting up and maintaining those services.

      Personally, I've been paying for email service from a fairly reputable provider, but I am now transitioning into running my own servers to manage it. Partly cost reasons (I maintain email services for clients, over 30 domains) and partly the provider I was using was bought out by another company I don't really trust.

    2. Re:the kiss of death by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "You host your own as in you have a physical machine in your house"

      I host it at home.

      "Most ISPs here block tcp25"

      That means a minority doesn't.

      Vote with your wallet.

  2. Wait. What? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, there's this:

    While those who have set up forwarding in the past are unaffected, ...

    and, also this:

    The company's website says that the "automatic email forwarding" feature is under development and has been temporarily disabled.

    So... forwarding already enabled is unaffected but otherwise it's disabled - 'cause it's under "development" -- even though it's actually, already working?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  3. "automatic email forwarding under development" by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here are some other cutting-edge email features currently under development at Yahoo:

    * WYSIWYG display of text
    * Mouse Support
    * Select multiple emails to delete
    * CC: feature (in beta)

  4. Re:Auto (vacation) Reply? by MarcAuslander · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make a gmail account and tell it to pull the yahoo mail - then do whatever you like with it.

  5. Yahoo: the movie by cloud.pt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This company is looking more and more like the Titanic (film), in the ways the ship is being "sold" to the sea of Verizon, and wanting to take 'em all souls down below by not letting them use lifeboats properly. Even the music playing 'till the very end to keep passengers amused as if nothing happened. Let's face it: the only way a company can save any kind of face from such a disaster is much like what Samsung is doing with the note 7: offer refunds, launch amazing new product pronto (fingers crossed for that, we don't want to lose that Android player, even if a seriously bloated one at that, the alternative is a closed ecosystem with an Apple and a price to match).

    But do you really wanna know what hurts the most? I'm a Yahoo Mail user since like 1999, and to this date I haven't gotten a single email, notification, anything at all stating the leak details through "common channels": I didn't get a CS email; I didn't get a site-bound notification in the UI; I didn't get an email on my alternative, out-of-Yahoo account; I've been searching their news feed since the first rumors and got no hits. It's flat out offensive. If I was an American citizen, or if such a thing as class action existed where I'm from, I would be suing their asses to oblivion (because only through a class can this have any meaning to a judge). I'm calling upon you Americans reading this: stick it up to them for us, they do not deserve a penny of the Verizon deal, and such a company deserves to be dismembered so that the actual talent it still has can move forward to real challenges, and the a-holes making these obviously economically-bound reasons can burn in the hell they're destined to.