Yahoo asking for subscription payment to send and receive emails

This morning I received a notification in my Yahoo email web view that for my account that I have had since 1998 I would need to pay a subscription fee OR signup for their 'plus' product in order to send or receive emails. If I don't pay I will effectively be locked out of my email that I have had for close to 30 years. At this point in my life porting to a new primary email address isn't feasible and the monetary cost of the email isn't the point here for me, it's the principle that they are stopping the sending and receiving of email unless I pay. This doesn't feel right ?

Just a suggestion, enable IMAP in yahoo and generate an app password. Use something like Thunderbird to "move" all your emails off their server and onto Thunderbird locally. Get in the habit of exporting and backing up those emails. Then your mailbox will not be full and perhaps the messages will stop. Messages can still be sent and received in their web interface but your saved messages that you move will be saved locally.

A hybrid of this would be to move folders that you don't really use any more and just have for archival purposes. Whatever it takes to free up space.

The other option of course is to pay them for more storage.