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Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

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Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#61

Post by newscracker »

dpc_pw wrote: post #58
kstrauser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say this. You probably don't have old, forgotten accounts laying around with your Yahoo email address tied to them, but if you do, Yahoo reserves the right to hand over your password reset abilities to the next person who wants your username. DON'T DELETE YOUR YAHOO ACCOUNT. Purge it of all content, sure, but flat-out deleting it is very risky.

I guess setting auto-reply with "I don't use this account anymore, please contact me via (either email or a link)." would do the job quite well.

Almost all commercial mails, including newsletters, past orders, discount offers based on purchases, etc., use an "unmonitored mailbox" or an invalid address to send information. Any reply, manual or automatic, will never get seen by anyone on the other side to take any sort of action.

The only way out is to trawl through one's account, hoping that at least one mail from each contact is available, and then changing the email address with each of those. For personal contacts, this would involve emailing them and hoping they see it. For commercial contacts, it would involve going to the respective site and figuring out how to change the address and confirm the new address. Overall, this would be a cumbersome process for many people.

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#62

Post by newscracker »

eberkund wrote: post #5
Vanit wrote: post #4

This is why you should use your own email domain so you can just shuffle it around providers as needed.

For most providers, using your own domain is a paid feature.

Mail forwarding is also a paid feature on Yahoo. Those on the free tier cannot do it.

P.S.: On the other hand, Gmail allows free IMAP/POP and free email forwarding.

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#63

Post by newscracker »

Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways:

1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) want individual accounts even if their actual usage volumes are less. Pricing by user account is the barrier here, instead of pricing by usage (consider that it provides 600 aliases per user, which 99% of users wouldn't use to the full extent, but charges based on user accounts). Provides support for IMAP/POP, importing existing mails from other accounts and exporting mails out. A few hundred dollars a year for email is quite expensive for me.

2. Protonmail - no way to import mails from existing mail accounts or to export mails from the system. The lack of support for IMAP/POP means one does not have the freedom to move out. Suggestions on these have been waiting for two years with nothing to show for. Pricing is somewhat similar to Fastmail, but offers more flexibility. This too could get very expensive even with lower actual usage per user.

3. Tutanota - much better on flexible pricing based on different parameters, but it's similar to Protonmail in that it does not support importing existing mail or exporting mails out. It too lacks support for IMAP/POP and states that it's never going to support them for privacy reasons.

4. Startmail - quite similar to Fastmail on the pricing issue, but has IMAP support.

Are there any other providers who do better on all these fronts? I'd like to use custom domains, have multiple user accounts (with separate credentials), preferably manage storage across users, be able to import and export mails, and have IMAP/POP support in order to use different systems (phones, tablets, computers with different operating systems). I don't believe that web mail and custom apps ought to be the only way to use email.

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#64

Post by askvictor »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38
MisterWalter wrote: post #36

I worked at a school helpdesk for a while, and I saw that whenever school email accounts were hacked, the attackers would set up forwarding to some other account. People wouldn't notice the forwarding for weeks or longer, and would only come in to us by chance. In the meantime, a lot of information could be siphoned off. There could be some legitimate security concerns there, especially since most yahoo accounts don'…

There is a very easy solution to this, which I believe Gmail employs: Place a very noticeable banner on the inbox when all your email is being forwarded to another address.

We had such an attack recently; the banner disappears after a time (also, users don't read banners)

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#65

Post by askvictor »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38
MisterWalter wrote: post #36

I worked at a school helpdesk for a while, and I saw that whenever school email accounts were hacked, the attackers would set up forwarding to some other account. People wouldn't notice the forwarding for weeks or longer, and would only come in to us by chance. In the meantime, a lot of information could be siphoned off. There could be some legitimate security concerns there, especially since most yahoo accounts don'…

There is a very easy solution to this, which I believe Gmail employs: Place a very noticeable banner on the inbox when all your email is being forwarded to another address.

We had such an attack recently; the banner disappears after a time (also, users don't read banners)

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#66

Post by kijin »

newscracker wrote: post #63

Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways: 1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) w…

LuxSci is top notch. It's expensive if you only use it for one or two accounts, but can be cheaper than FastMail if you have several accounts sharing your disk quota.

Runbox is probably as privacy-respecting as you can get without delving into the kind of zero-knowledge encryption schemes that make Protonmail and similar services incompatible with IMAP/POP. Their webmail is meh, but that won't matter if you usually access your mail via IMAP/POP.

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#67

Post by msh »

newscracker wrote: post #63

Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways: 1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) w…

I am using mailbox.org

It's quite cheap and supports using your own domain.

It's German based but I have had no issues communicating with the support in English.

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#68

Post by jnsaff2 »

ikeboy wrote: post #48

>Update, 10/10/16, 5:30 PM ET – Yahoo shared the following statement with TechCrunch: “We’re working to get auto-forward back up and running as soon as possible because we know how useful it can be to our users. The feature was temporary disabled as part of previously planned maintenance to improve its functionality between a user’s various accounts. Users can expect an update to the auto-forward functionality soon.…

But Yahoo only needs to stop people from moving away as long as they remember what Yahoo did, that memory is measured in days? weeks?

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#69

Post by fredfisch »

newscracker wrote: post #63

Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways: 1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) w…

I found isync/mbsync to be a reliable tool to migrate my mail from one email provider to another.[1] You have to be into unix-y command line, though.

[1] See e.g. https://psyq123.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/backing-up-email-fr...

Re: Yahoo makes it difficult to leave its service by disabling email forwarding

#70

Post by newscracker »

fredfisch wrote: post #69
newscracker wrote: post #63

Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways: 1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) w…

I found isync/mbsync to be a reliable tool to migrate my mail from one email provider to another.[1] You have to be into unix-y command line, though. [1] See e.g. https://psyq123.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/backing-up-email-fr...

That's useful only if the provider you're moving to supports importing mail. As mentioned in my comment, some of the privacy focused ones do not (or are yet to) support importing existing mails.
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