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Yahoo, Bucking Industry, Scans Emails for Data To Sell Advertisers (wsj.com)
The U.S. tech industry has largely declared it is off limits to scan emails for information to sell to advertisers. Yahoo still sees the practice as a potential gold mine. From a report: Yahoo's owner, the Oath unit of Verizon Communications has been pitching a service to advertisers that analyzes more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes and the rich user data they contain, searching for clues about what products those users might buy, said people who have attended Oath's presentations as well as current and former employees of the company. Oath said the practice extends to AOL Mail, which it also owns. Together, they constitute the only major U.S. email provider that scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
Together, they constitute the only major U.S. email provider that [admits that it] scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
Yet another reason to avoid Yahoo (and, by extension, Verizon).
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
More fake news from a semi-official propaganda outlet. EVERYONE knows that Google and Facebook datamine your inbox, your browsing habits, and absolutely anything else they can find. And sell that data to repressive gover... er, I mean, advertisers.
Not a goddamn chance. Really, what we need is an outright end-to-end encrypted ubiquitous replacement for email (similarly bring-your-own-server). Something that provides no opportunity for snooping, whether it's Grandpa doing the setup or Yahoo! trying to read your email.
Google doesn't tell you they're going to fuck you over.
That's the more evil way...
Everyone scans your email. Google just doesn't "read" it, i.e. it's all automated. Obviously, one might add, but that is their PR loop hole. Stop using ad-financed services if you don't want advertisers to shoulder-surf.
Did they take a oath that your stuff is our stuff to do with what we want? I guess that is the consensus of a free service these days.
and just how many seconds after selling their soul did they decide this?
to poison the well of email scanning.
It wouldn't take much to dump some emails with personal or financial lies into your inbox.
Extra points for references to non-existent medical conditions or upcoming illegal transactions.
I'd give you a mod point if it ever got one. Not insightful, but a short joke.
Old question: Having IPOPed a copy of my email from the account, is there any reason not to nuke it completely? Will my IPOP client try to delete it when the Yahoo account stops responding? Maybe I should IPOP it to a second client? Or figure out some way to export it from the current client before nuking the account?
Perhaps more importantly, is there some way I can poison the data first (including the email, but presumably other personal data, too)? I know there is no way to prove they didn't keep an illegal copy, no matter what the old or new ToS claim. It is quite obvious that the new purchasers of Yahoo are speculating on the value of personal information, and I'd love to leave garbage behind.
You'll scan people's private email for gun control text and sell the NRA that advert.
You'll scan people's private emails for political discussion and sell that to Russian trolls.
You'll scan people's private email discussions for Net Neutrality and sell them to.... *Verizon*, i.e. you, so you can use the content of their discussions for your anti- NN bullshit.
The contents of people private emails are there to be scanned for keyphrases and sold to advertisers, because every private conversation needs to be sold to whoever will pay for data on it according to Verizon.
I'm sure Ajit Pai will step in an regulate his former (and future) employer.....not!
Verizon: sociopathy!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
AOL is skeevy, Yahoo is skeevy, Verizon is also skeevy.
Oath is skeevy AF.
Many people in Europe have Yahoo adresses. Some will even have Yahoo.com and not e.g. Yahoo.fr or Yahoo.co.uk adresses.
So what is 4% of their annual turnover? (Hint: GDPR)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I use ProtonMail.com. what do you good Slashdot readers recommend?
*** Don't be dull.***
Well, Yahoo has been dying for years, and most of my browsers block the Yahoo and Oath domains.
My ISP-provided email for years was essentially backed by a Yahoo account, and a year or so ago I stopped using it entirely because I never used that email much anyway.
This is just Oath/Yahoo admitting they're assholes who no longer deserve anybody's trust.
Sorry Yahoo, but you're already mostly dead to me, now I'll make sure my browsers block the rest of your shit, and you can die quietly.
Sorry, but Yahoo hasn't been relevant in years, there's just a bunch of people with Yahoo email addresses who haven't caught on to this fact.
Oh wait...
I was so early to the Yahoo Mail game that I was able to get firstname.lastname as an address. It was great for the better part of a decade. I even upgraded to the "Mail Plus" package to get some extra features and to naively show my support for their great product.
Over the past couple of years, they've made some business decisions that have driven me away inch by inch.
- They moved all of the features of the paid-tier to the free-tier, except for ads. Now the only reason to pay is to remove ads.
- The webmail interface has gone through 2-3 updates that make it slower and more difficult to use with each revision.
- Your reward now for having an empty inbox is "watch this random video!". It actually incentivizes me to keep mail in my inbox so I don't have to see it.
I decided that it was time to abandon free email providers and bought my own domain. Now I can jump ship if my current provider (Fastmail) ever disappoints me and not have to go through the headache of changing email addresses.
Ironically, the only e-mail messages that come into my (largely defunct) Yahoo account are from... ummm... advertisers. That is to say, that's the address I give out to websites and/or companies that I never actually want to hear from again. So, did I buy something from those companies? Maybe... but just as likely not. So sure, Verizon; knock yourself out -- though, I have little faith that you're going to get much real value out of scraping my inbox.
(Also... it baffles my mind that there are people who still use legacy AOL accounts.)
This is Ok with me as I use a Yahoo address for my "you want my email?", here it is response.
Passionately Indifferent
Considering the majority of email will be spam for Viagara, does this mean Yahoo will finaly admit their part in spams enablement?
It's been my long held belief that email providers themselves intentionally facilitate spam because it perpetuates their scummy business model. What I'd LOVE is some way to say "this email {domain | address} cannot be routed through nor used by the following providers" - of which Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Micrsoft and Amazon would all be at the top. I 've used domains I knew were blacklisted smply because they stood a very low chance of being archived. Prety ironic.
More I think of this.. hmm. I know Microshaft and Google have domain signing and some companies use it for IDP AM's (Adobe for example), what I those were intentionally bogus. Or, even better, any mx /spf dns records to those providers..
I cannot fathom why this thing still exists. They were famous years ago for screwing up everything they touched.
This is stupid of the them to do. They're going to be scanning confidential data from parties that never agreed to allow them to view their communications. I look forward to send a few trap e-mails with some medical data and then suing then when I start getting ads about medication for the condition.
I have a bellsouth.net email account from about 1992 when the phone company was offering dial up service. I even purchased a dedicated second phone line just for the modem to use. Then AT&T took over Bellsouth circa 1998 or so and although AT&T kept the Bellsouth.net domain they offered me a ATT.net email address and webspace. I never did use the ATT.net email address and but I did use the webspace for a time and my home made web page is still available to be viewed although I have no access to att.net now to remove it.
AT&T got out of the mail and web hosting space when they abandoned dial up in favor of DSL which I then moved to probably 2000 or so, and Yahoo took over the email service. So I have to sign onto mail.yahoo.com to get to my bellsouth.net email account.
So my question, I'm not sure that yahoo.com owns the bellsouth.net domain, but am I screwed anyway?
Nathan
I used slow DSL with a small local ISP for as long as the copper phone lines lasted, because I sure as hell wasn't going to voluntarily choose all the crap that the big guys do to you. When the copper lines finally stopped working entirely (because Verizon refuses to repair them), I was forced to go with Verizon FiOS. Like all ISPs, Verizon provided me with an email service (@verizon.net). And then a few years later they forced everyone onto AOL mail instead. Then the spam started arriving, not from anyone I had given my email address to (since I take measures to prevent that), but from AOL itself. Awesome.
Email has always been one of the standard services provided by the ISP. They shouldn't have to monetize it or use it for advertising, since you are already paying for it as part of your Internet service. Crap like this is why I wanted to stay with a small ISP, but I had no choice to switch. I would be willing to pay money for an alternate email service that respects my privacy, but I shouldn't have to. Plus, it is a pain to switch email addresses. Again.
The whole point of GMail is to scan your email to better serve you ads. It's been that way from the first day it was announced and it was promoted as a feature. 'We'll give you 1GB of free inbox space (normal was around 10-50MB at the time) if we can scan your emails.'
Why is WSJ attacking Yahoo? Why is WSJ not attacking Google? Why isn't it illegal for journalists to publish clearly false stories? Journalists get special legal protection, so they should also be held to a higher standard of content as well.
How does ReverendGreen's baseless claim that the WSJ is a propaganda outlet get 4 point mod up? It's probably the best and fairest news source out there.
Gently reply
Article was silent on this point, but it would be a far greater portion of email traffic if they are scanning INCOMING and REPLIED-TO emails to sell to marketers (and would make Gmail, MS and others who ceased that activity somewhat toothless in their guarantee). [and as the one who made this WSJ submission, who is MSMASH and why do all submissions come from MSMASH today?)
Gently reply
1.
They're nothing short of that.
Also in the news: 'It Is a Challenging Time for the Internet: We Must Not Let It Be Undermined'
In related news, AOL mail was rehosted to the Yahoo mail platform quite some time ago.
Kriston
Even more surprising is that Yahoo is still even around.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The technology exists to encrypt email so that it matters less if they snoop, just roughly nobody is using it.
Google, AOL, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I still use uce@ftc.gov for all my spammy needs. I learned that here on /. in 1998. Damn, I am old....school...
lol. your butthurt post is one of those that says nothing about the topic and everything about the author
Um, get out of the basement once in a while, and you'd see it in many people's mail. AOL too.
Just another day in Paradise