Yahoo Doing Something Tricky

Not DR related, but important to know if you use Yahoo mail.

Yahoo has changed its policy and will now send ALL newsletters, etc., to ALL users even though you may have previously opted out. This apparently is one of their ploys to get you to pay for premium service.

If you have a Yahoo account, go to http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount. I'll be amazed if you don't find that all of the boxes have been checked "yes". If you don't want the newsletters, change the "yeses" to "nos", save the settings, then go to upper right corner link to email preferences and mark them "no" also.

By chance I learned of this through another message board that I monitor.

Trouble is, we have to much faith.

Those agreements we are usually asked to accept when we sign up for service are so long that few of us bother to ready them. I know I don't. But the Yahoo agreement, and I'll bet those of many other service providers, allow them to change their policies without giving us notice.

In this case, there are likely to be millions of Yahoo users who won't know that anything has changed until their mail boxes start filling up with unwanted newsletters and their phone starts ringing. Hopefully then they will be able to find out where to go to stop the deluge. The easy way, of course, will be for them to sign up for the paid "Premium" service.

Personally, I don't blame service providers for instituting paid service. To stay in business, they have to make a profit somehow. If ads don't do it, at least in part because so many of us are blocking them with ad and popup killers, cookie controlers, etc., then their only other alternative is user pay. I accept that. What I don't like are sneaky manuevers, like the one by Yahoo, which are more likely to anger many potential buyers of service enough for them to look for other providers, and which undermine the confidence you should have in a service that has access to considerable personal information about its clients.

It will work if you change to the paid service. Hotmail is also going to initiate a paid service. Some free mail providers have shut down, others have switched or are switching to paid service to survive. I think we are seeing the end of free email.

One option that more and more people are considering is to set up your own domain. Then you can have a permanent address. If one service provider closes, you can switch your address to another. In fact, with many of the domain hosts you can have multiple accounts so other members of your family have the same .com address (e.g., john@family.com;mary@family.com;harry@family.com) This is paid service, but no more than is being asked by the providers (e.g. Yahoo) that are phasing out free service for paid.

Another advantage is that if you don't like the service you get from one host, you can switch your address to another. That is not possible with a Yahoo or Hotmail account.

For an "explanation" see....

Yahoo has posted an explanation why they changed preferences of their clients. You can see it at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-23.html.

They think they do us a favor when they fill our mailboxes with unwanted literature.

Try this is other doesn't work

When I tried the link that was posted, for some reason or other it didn't work. What I'm posting now is the link copied and pasted from the webpage

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-23.html