[PSA] GET OFF OF YAHOO NOW!!!

[Black Aeronaut]

They've started scanning their users emails for information to sell to advertising agents.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-bucki...1535466959


Wall Street Journal, so you know this isn't a red herring.

[robkelk]

This snippet from the story, posted to slashdot, says AOL Mail is also affected by this.

And it's not the first time they've read their clients' emails. Reuters, 2016: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence

And I'll mention that Yahoo and AOL are owned by Verizon...

[hazard]

I've a feeling the moment the EU gets even an inkling any data of any EU citizen was scanned Yahoo is going to be in deep shit.

And, well, that already happened.

The General Data Protection Regulation has yet to be tested in court, but it's not going to be handled in a US one. And EU courts?

EU courts are a lot more willing to lay humongous fines on big companies. As in, Google got a 4.34 billion euro antitrust fine this year.

[classicdrogn]

I already did and deleted the account, because I refused to accept the new EULA when it got sold to these bozos. Actually reading the things warns you of stuff the service provider might try to pull, who knew? Shame about my old emails and contacts list, but at least I already had another email going on mail.com, who by the way I recommend if you're looking for a new web mail host. They've got US, German, and ... some other branch I don't remember, but from the timestamps on mail received, choice of articles, and general feel of the writing their primary is probably in Britain.

[Dartz]

Dontcha know they all do it unless you pay them. I'm pretty sure gmail does it. It also reads everything you put on google docs.

We're the pigs in the free sty, remember?

[Labster]

Google doesn't need to sell the information; they sell ads to you based on the information. It never actually leaves their servers, except in a mostly anonymized form. The fact that Yahoo! and Oath feel the need to sell information means that they truly lost the war for users. The real money is in controlling information, which is what Google and Facebook really get.

I've heard good things about FastMail... I really should consider switching.

[Bob Schroeck]

I have a Yahoo account, but I don't use it for anything but looking at Caer Azkaban and a couple other fic authors' groups, to which I post once in a blue moon if that often. I don't use the mail address for anything except for Yahoo's own communications, and the name on the account isn't anywhere close to mine. So I figure I'm pretty safe. <grin>

[Inquisitive Raven]

Like Bob, I have a Yahoo account primarily for access to their email groups, mostly hobby groups, but also my local Freecycle, and I actually have mail from those lists sent to my Gmail account.

Does anyone have a suggestion for an alternative email list manager I could recommend to the list owners if they want to move? Freecycle already has an alternate site called "Trash Nothing!" so I can drop that list if I want to.