Yahoo! Privacy Concerns
I am so annoyed with Yahoo! this last while that I decided to vent publicly here on my blog. Now, I am complaining about a free for use service so a lot of people out there would say that you just have to take it and I tend to agree but I still don’t like it. Anyway on with the story.
Quite a few years ago I setup a Yahoo! account using the user ID ‘hitman200ca’ for the express purpose of playing Pool on Yahoo Games with my friends at University. By the way, I love that game despite all its flaws, its really fun. A couple years ago I decided that I needed an online calendar. The Hotmail one included with my 25MB (!!) paid account (boy times have changed) was no good to me. There were (are?) too many bugs including a particular one that didn’t allow the email reminders to be sent for me. I dusted off my Yahoo! account and started using Yahoo! Calendar which incidentally I loved because of its features and it just worked great. Now when it came time to share my calendar for work purposes I was a little embarrassed by the Yahoo! ID I had selected so I created a new account with a more grown up ID. After a short migration period I deleted my old Yahoo! ID and continued on happily.
The first time I realized there was a problem was one day when I noticed that I received two reminders for a birthday and then two more again. I took a look at the emails and noticed that the extras were coming from my old account that I had deleted. Immediately I went to go and delete all reoccurring event in my old calendar but of course since I deleted it Yahoo! would not let me login anymore. I contacted Yahoo! support several times over the next few months trying in vain to get the extra reminders to stop. I received some generic responses that looked as if the support person noticed the word ‘Calendar’ and sent me a form response but no luck.
Yesterday I thought of a new thing to try “Hmm… I wonder what would happen if I signed up for ‘hitman200ca’ again?”. After a couple minutes and an activation email I logged into Yahoo! Calendar and lo and behold my reoccurring reminders were still there. I was so pleased with myself I immediately deleted the events and then deleted the account again.
But wait, what if someone other than me signed up for ‘hitman200ca’? I’ll bet you can guess! I looked through the documentation on the pages when I deleted my account and it certainly said Calendar was among the things deleted. Also it was much longer than 90 days between the time I deleted the old account and the time I noticed the extra reminders (GMail conversation threading, didn’t notice the (2)). I hope my experience was an isolated incident but I doubt it was.
As for me, I am starting to migrate my calendar entries into Google Calendar so I can get away from Yahoo!. Although I’m sure that nobody over there cares much, oh well.
I agree, Yahoo! sucks. Though, since I have Rogers Internet, they give you Yahoo! branded e-mail and such. It’s not so bad, since there are minimal ads and you get priority support (HAH!) but I prefer sticking to my own domain name when it comes to e-mail. I like having control.
The one good thing about Yahoo! Mail, though, is that they’re testing out a brand-new interface right now. I’ve been lucky enough to get a spot in the beta, and I must say, the interface is pretty impressive. It’s almost as good as Outlook, except it’s 100% web-based and doesn’t rely on crap like ActiveX or Java, which make me cringe each time I hear their names.
Hi.
Good design, who make it?
Thanks very much for the compliment.
My blog theme is custom. I created it. However I no longer like it and will be switching to a new theme (of my own creation as well) within the next year.
I do not have serious concern about privacy with internet service until the moment when I am astonished that Yahoo! ask for my credit card information for signing up a free Yahoo! service.
The story begins from a violation warning on Yahoo! Answers. I strongly believe that I do not violate the community guidelines. The asker post a 5-word question “Can you jtag without soldering?” on Yahoo! Answers under the category Science and Mathematics > Engineering. I researched Wikipedia.org and posted about 300 words on JTAG in manufacturing test in the electronics industry which is the primary objective of JTAG. However the asker was talking about hacking xBox with JTAG and therefore angry with my answer and reported me for abuse.
Then I posted a question describing the case and seeking comment from other users whether I was violating the rules. I felt disappointed because the majority of answerers thought that I was violating the rules. I rewrote the question and posted again but it did not receive any answer. I think of answering myself with a different ID. Therefore I sign up with Yahoo! for a new ID.
Unlike the writer’s experience, I feel that Yahoo! detects my double registration (maybe because of the same IP address or something else) and asks for my identification with sensitive credit card information. I am shocked immediately. It may be Yahoo! effort to prevent multiple registration by the same person for account misuse. But it reveals that Yahoo! is tracking every detail of user’s activities and able to make automatic decision on some cource of action. What if the information is misused or abused?