Yahoo Explains Why It Recently Disable Automatic Forwarding On Yahoo Mail; Reinstates the Feature (businessinsider.com)

Earlier this month, Yahoo disabled the auto-forwarding feature from its Yahoo Mail email service, leaving people with little choice but to use Yahoo Mail client to check the emails their received on their Yahoo account. The company has now acknowledged the issue, explaining why it all happened, and most importantly, switched email forwarding feature on again. From a BusinessInsider report: "Why the pause? Over the past year, Yahoo Mail has been upgrading its platform. This has allowed us to bring a better search experience to Yahoo Mail, add multiple account support, and improve performance as we quickly scale this new system globally. The feature was temporarily disabled as part of this process," Michael Albers, VP of Yahoo Mail product management, wrote in a blog post. To turn on mail forwarding, go to Settings -- Account in Yahoo Mail and enter your forwarding address. After confirming that you, in fact, control that other address, automatic forwarding should be turned on.

Comments

This answer is total BS

[gweilo8888]

If it was simply turned off as part of the upgrade process, it would have been turned back on again silently, without the user having to take action. The fact we're told we have to reenable it shows quite clearly that Yahoo disabled it to prevent folks jumping ship, and has only begrudgingly turned it back on to try and squash the bad publicity that its move generated. It's clearly hoping that most users who would otherwise have used the feature won't realize it has been turned back on.

Re:This answer is total BS

[MightyYar]

IIRC, they did not disable the feature for people who were already using it - so there was nothing to switch back on.

Re:This answer is total BS

[ottott]

That statement is NOT true! If you had mail forwarding enabled, you will have to manually go and re-enable it yourself. I just confirmed this with my own account.

Re:This answer is total BS

[aardvarkjoe]

The new one checks to make sure you control the new address before spamming your poor victim.
Yahoo sucks, but they got this one right.

While that sort of a check might be reasonable, it absolutely was not "right" to roll out a new system without having e-mail forwarding in place. To get it "right", they should have had their new system ready to go before rolling it out.

Run from Yahoo ASAP

[ITRambo]

Anyone still using Yahoo needs to jump ship as Yahoo will never be a great company, especially if Verizon purchases it.

Real answer

[Nidi62]

We wanted to make sure it was as hard as possible for people to leave until our deal with Verizon went through, as more users equals more money for the deal. It was especially important once people became aware of our massive data breach. But now we need the good PR because Verizon is having second thoughts about the proposed deal and wants to renegotiate terms.

I call bullshit

[ilsaloving]

If this was a required move as part of whatever upgrade they were doing, they would have notified people beforehand to expect it.

The most charitable explanation is that their management is incompetent in failing to provide that heads up.

The most likely explanation was that they quietly tried to close the door on people trying to jump ship, and now they're backpedalling because of the uproar.

I haven't touched Yahoo for many years now, and it seems like they've made it their mission to justify my departure as much as possible.