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Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

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Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#11

Post by nkorth »

brianwillis wrote: post #6

This is a fantastic idea, and I wish other services (I'm looking at you Twitter) would follow suit. Your Yahoo ID becomes a part of your identity when using their service, so it seems reasonable that people will feel happier and be more inclined to use Yahoo's stuff when they have an ID that they feel good about and aren't embarrassed to share with their friends.

I went to sign up for Twitter and found that my usual username was taken by someone with exactly one tweet, from 4 years ago! It's definitely frustrating.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#12

Post by tagold »

austenallred wrote: post #8

If this isn't the sign of a product with declining use, I don't know what is. Of course it isn't news that few people use Yahoo mail anymore, but the fact that it's worth it to Yahoo to turn those emails off is interesting.

This is a way worse then just disabling unused old accounts and, say, deleting emails stored there. Yahoo is going to "resell"(1) these accounts. This will create all kind of privacy problems, and potential for abuse: gaining access to other services through resetting passwords there, impersonating users, people receiving private communications not intended for them, etc. And all this for what purpose? Give few lucky ones get a coveted email address like jonny@yahoo.com instead of jonny_m35@yahoo.com?

(1) "Resell" is the not quite accurate word here as they are going to give it for free, but I can't come with a better word.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#13

Post by rgbrenner »

tagold wrote: post #12
austenallred wrote: post #8

If this isn't the sign of a product with declining use, I don't know what is. Of course it isn't news that few people use Yahoo mail anymore, but the fact that it's worth it to Yahoo to turn those emails off is interesting.

This is a way worse then just disabling unused old accounts and, say, deleting emails stored there. Yahoo is going to "resell"(1) these accounts. This will create all kind of privacy problems, and potential for abuse: gaining access to other services through resetting passwords there, impersonating users, people receiving private communications not intended for them, etc. And all this for what purpose? Give few lucky…

reuse

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#14

Post by b_emery »

joshfraser wrote: post #3

This is terrible idea. People will be able to claim Yahoo IDs and use them to take over other people’s identities with a few password resets. I have a Yahoo email address simply as a backup for GMail. Just because I don't sign in very often doesn't mean that it is safe to hand over to someone else!

Wired agrees with you ("a spectacularly bad idea"): http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/yahoos-very-bad-ide...

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#15

Post by raldi »

purephase wrote: post #4
joshfraser wrote: post #3

This is terrible idea. People will be able to claim Yahoo IDs and use them to take over other people’s identities with a few password resets. I have a Yahoo email address simply as a backup for GMail. Just because I don't sign in very often doesn't mean that it is safe to hand over to someone else!

But a year? Come on.

What if, five years ago when you signed up for purephase1234@gmail.com, you listed purephase1234@yahoo.com as your recovery address?

Now, thanks to this move by Yahoo, your Google account is in danger of being compromised.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#16

Post by anon808 »

tagold wrote: post #12
austenallred wrote: post #8

If this isn't the sign of a product with declining use, I don't know what is. Of course it isn't news that few people use Yahoo mail anymore, but the fact that it's worth it to Yahoo to turn those emails off is interesting.

This is a way worse then just disabling unused old accounts and, say, deleting emails stored there. Yahoo is going to "resell"(1) these accounts. This will create all kind of privacy problems, and potential for abuse: gaining access to other services through resetting passwords there, impersonating users, people receiving private communications not intended for them, etc. And all this for what purpose? Give few lucky…

yahoo is trading a sliver of goodwill from people that can now get their name of choice for incredibly pissed off former users that lost emails they relied on. Just because they havn't logged into them, doesn't mean they weren't using them. EX: i use a yahoo email for an ebay account I regularly use, but because of ebay's messaging I never log into yahoo. If i'm not the only person on earth that does this, there will be bad results from this 'house cleaning'.

The point is email address arent just for getting emails, they're used as identities online.

How horrible and shortsighted. Yahoo is actively inviting ill will and complexity.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#17

Post by camus »

austenallred wrote: post #8

If this isn't the sign of a product with declining use, I don't know what is. Of course it isn't news that few people use Yahoo mail anymore, but the fact that it's worth it to Yahoo to turn those emails off is interesting.

yahoo mail was my first mail 15 years ago. But the product hasnt evolved much yet. In my opinion , Yahoo lacks of the proper agile culture where products evolve gradually (like google products ). Look at yahoo groups , feels like 1999 ... So they can buy start-up all they want , yahoo has a cultural problem. definetly , at least if they want to look relevant.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#18

Post by tagold »

purephase wrote: post #7
tagold wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the person doesn't have access to the internet for a year?

.. and Yahoo or any other similarly priced services should know this how? Meaning, you get what you paid for and if your usage of said service falls outside of an expected range then don't be surprised if your service is suspended. It's 2013. I feel like this particular lesson should be well established, public domain knowledge but here it is again: Free data, storage and associated services means that you are the pr…

They are not discontinuing their product line or even canceling service for some of its customers. What they do is effectively transferring online identities they granted from less deserving, from their perspective, users to more deserving ones.

There is a lot of problems with this from both from security and moral points of view.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#19

Post by timmins »

austenallred wrote: post #8

If this isn't the sign of a product with declining use, I don't know what is. Of course it isn't news that few people use Yahoo mail anymore, but the fact that it's worth it to Yahoo to turn those emails off is interesting.

Maybe. My perspective is that Yahoo! did some research on why people left, stopped using, or never considered Y! as their mail service. I presume one of the responses is that people dislike non-vanity addresses. Instead of tedthomas@yahoo.com, the only variations that remain include thomasted110@ or tedthomasemail@. Ugh.

A simple query would show that these vanity addresses are sitting stagnant. A touch of PR and awareness instills or revives interest.

I think an optimistic view is that Yahoo! is willing to cut the fat and take chances on reuniting strayed in addition to inviting new users.

Re: Log in to Yahoo by July 15th to keep your email address

#20

Post by michaelmior »

brianwillis wrote: post #6

This is a fantastic idea, and I wish other services (I'm looking at you Twitter) would follow suit. Your Yahoo ID becomes a part of your identity when using their service, so it seems reasonable that people will feel happier and be more inclined to use Yahoo's stuff when they have an ID that they feel good about and aren't embarrassed to share with their friends.

Twitter used to do this upon request. I assume they stopped because a manual process was too time-consuming.
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