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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

#31

Post by numbers »

Let me be the only one who thinks this is actually not a bad idea. I have a very typical name, very commonly used and if almost on every popular email service (gmail, hotmail, yahoo), I've tried registering a few varieties of my first.last@gmail.com or even first.last.birthyear@gmail.com and it's almost always taken.

If you think your identity could be stolen because of an unused email address, it might be your fault that's going to happen. Why would you register with an inactive email address and not check it? Email address seem like the main way for most people to login, if you have multiple, you must at least check them for something once every six months.

This announcement only says that they will remove those that haven't logged into their account in the last 12 months. Seems like a very long time in internet time.

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

#32

Post by UVB-76 »

michaelmior wrote: post #20
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.

I emailed Twitter four years ago with such a request, and got this response:

> Twitter is not currently releasing inactive user names. Unless your user name issue involves Terms of Service violations, you'll have to wait until all inactive user names are released. We're working on a better long term solution for this, and we should have more news soon.

Four years later, the username I want(ed) has had no more activity, and that "long term solution" is nowhere to be seen.

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

#33

Post by camelite »

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…

Reallocate?

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

#34

Post by daimyoyo »

I feel conflicted about this. On one hand, I haven't logged in to my yahoo account for several years so I clearly don't "need" it but on the other I don't want to have someone steal my username. I think the fact that yahoo is so desperate to get people back on their platform that they're willing to resort to this tactic should be very unsettling to anyone with a vested interest in the company as a long term investment.

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

#35

Post by pdb123 »

daimyoyo wrote: post #34

I feel conflicted about this. On one hand, I haven't logged in to my yahoo account for several years so I clearly don't "need" it but on the other I don't want to have someone steal my username. I think the fact that yahoo is so desperate to get people back on their platform that they're willing to resort to this tactic should be very unsettling to anyone with a vested interest in the company as a long term investmen…

Yahoo should be desperate. After fading into irrelevance for the past decade they need to make unusual/risky decisions to have any hope of turning that around.

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

#36

Post by leoedin »

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.

A year is a very short period of time. Many people have been active on the internet for decades.

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

#37

Post by gcb0 »

b_emery wrote: post #14
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...

Wow. a 'journalist' that writes an op'ed piece and does not even mention trying to contact the company.

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

#38

Post by ryandrake »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #22

This is a terrible idea! I have a month to compile a list of the most popular first and last names and popular e-mail names and get a bot ready to register them all. Once registered, I can then attempt password recovery for these @yahoo.com email addresses at the most popular web sites across the Internet that rely on established identities (ebay.com?). If JamesSmith@yahoo.com ever used his yahoo id to register an ac…

1. Scan DNS registrations for administrators with @yahoo.com addresses

2. Claim as many of those E-mail addresses as you can

3. Hold your newly acquired domains hostage for $$$

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

#39

Post by harryh »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #22

This is a terrible idea! I have a month to compile a list of the most popular first and last names and popular e-mail names and get a bot ready to register them all. Once registered, I can then attempt password recovery for these @yahoo.com email addresses at the most popular web sites across the Internet that rely on established identities (ebay.com?). If JamesSmith@yahoo.com ever used his yahoo id to register an ac…

The people that work at Yahoo are not stupid. They will surely have a process in place to prevent a single person from sucking up all the short/popular email names.

Even if that person wasn't doing it for nefarious purposes that would completely defeat Yahoo's whole goal here of getting these names in the hands of users who actually want to use them.

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