nlinecomputers Posted November 21, 2003 Share Posted November 21, 2003 But we are doing it anyway. I got this email yesterday from SBC/Yahoo. I missed it, ironicly, because POPfile nabbed it as spam and dropped it into my spam can. Saw the posts on Slashdot and fished it out into the air to see. Dear Yahoo! Member,Last year we announced changes that affect how we communicate with Yahoo! members about Yahoo!'s own products and services. However, we have not yet implemented those changes for all our registered members. Because of your previous account settings, Yahoo! has not yet sent you marketing communications under the new program. Before we do, we want to remind you how to set your preferences, and let you know what has changed and what is not changing.Background InformationOver the years, we've sent emails to some registered Yahoo! members about Yahoo! products and services. We've also delivered promotional messages to Yahoo! members on behalf of our marketing partners. When you first registered with us and created your Yahoo! ID, our system presented a single "Yes" or "No" option for receiving all types of marketing communications. At some point you said "No," and after that we no longer sent any of these types of messages to you.In March 2002, we began rolling out an updated marketing communications system. Instead of just a single "Yes" or "No" choice, we created a new Marketing Preferences page where you decide:whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about our own products and services, and separately, whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about the offerings of our marketing partners;whether you want to hear from Yahoo! about certain types of Yahoo! products and services but not others (For example, you can select specific categories such as "Managing personal finances" or "Using Yahoo! for research and surfing the Web," and de-select other categories that might not be of interest to you.);whether you want to hear from Yahoo! (or not) by postal mail or telephone, in addition to email.When this updated system was first announced in March 2002, we told you we'd begin sending you messages about Yahoo! products and services across all categories, even though you had said "No" to messages under the old single choice system. We also told you that you could still say "No" to these messages by visiting your Marketing Preferences. But we did not completely implement this change until now. What's Changing on January 1, 2004Starting January 1, 2004, Yahoo! will begin to send you messages, via email or postal mail, about our own products and services. (We will not send you postal mail if you have given us a mailing address and have opted out of contact via postal delivery.) You can control the types of messages you receive by visiting your Marketing Preferences at any time. What's Not Changing on January 1, 2004As in the past, you will not be sent messages on behalf of our marketing partners. We will not call you on the telephone to market products or services. If you ever change your mind about any of these choices you can let us know by visiting and updating your Marketing Preferences at any time. Every marketing email you receive from Yahoo! will continue to include instructions for how to unsubscribe from more marketing email. And, as always, you can delete your Yahoo! account altogether at any time, for any reason, by going to the deletion page. Please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information. We look forward to serving you.Sincerely,Yahoo!I've allready told this %*^*^@! company that I didn't want spam form them. Now I've got to reset all that up again. This is bull. It's illegal and someone should sue the bums. &(!@?!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted November 21, 2003 Share Posted November 21, 2003 thats kinda funny in a way. "you said 'NO', but we upgraded our marketing procedure, and defaulted everyone to 'YES'" its almost as bad as Codemasters. i HAD to sign up for an account with them so i can download a game demo, and then i started getting bombarded by Codesmaster promo emails. I hit unsubscribe, and they wanted to know the passwords i used to sign up in the first place so i can have the power to change my promo settings. and since i only set up a quick bogus username/password so i can get their game demo, i didnt know it, and therefore couldnt 'log in' to tell them i want to unsubscribe their emails. grrrr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted November 21, 2003 Share Posted November 21, 2003 Does AOL own Yahoo or vice versa! LOL! This is the same marketing ploy AOL has been doing for years. Set your marketing setting and have to go back once a year to set them again! <_> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 21, 2003 Share Posted November 21, 2003 It's all about making money.As for the Yahoo email I wonder if the filters will trap it. Since I don't use that address for anything deleting everything every few months won't be that hard to do. I'm surprised that they will really spend the $ to sent the promotions postal mail. I'm going to select both the postal mail and phone call options, aren't you? Strangely enough I wonder what they would do if everyone did. Staffing would go thru the roof. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest genaldar Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 This is very different from AOL. AOL charges you for the pleasure of seeing their ads (highest priced isp and it smacks me in the face in ads at every turn? Sign me up now). Yahoo! won't bother you if you upgrade to a premium account. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stonegiant Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 I got that email, too. I went to check my settings and they haven't moved everything to 'yes' yet for me. I almost never go onto the yahoo site. I use YahooPOPs to download my yahoo mail into my email client (Thundbird). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paracelsus Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 Sorry, NLC ...Can't help but laugh. This is nothing new to Yahoo. And several others are going this route. I think some one referred to it as "OPT OUT". You're automatically subscribed unless you choose not to. And every time they update their, er... "Policy" , they reset the options to benefit themselves.They must figure that each time... Only 4 out of 10 users will know what to do Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 I got that email, too. I went to check my settings and they haven't moved everything to 'yes' yet for me.The switch to 'yes' was when they implimented the new system back in March of 02. I think what they're saying now is even if we reset everything to 'no' back then they're going to require us to do it again. Being of the suspicious type I wonder if the latest email is to verfiy that the email addresses we gave are still valid and/or to verify which accounts are still active by seeing who visits the Market Preferences site.Then again if they were really trying to annoy us or to spam us they wouldn't have given us a heads up with instructions how to stop the pending advertizing onslaught. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 I've recommended http://www.myway.com as a replacement for Yahoo in the past. It's nearly an exact copy of Yahoo but with no banner ads or pop-ups (unless they are tied to external content). You can configure it to look almost exactly like Yahoo. I have had not problems with them and I have been using them for around a year now. Scot was also using My Way as his home page some months back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 I've recommended http://www.myway.com as a replacement for Yahoo in the past.My.com is indeed a quality homepage. It's a spin off from Excite.com which use to be great until they put too much fixed content at the top and refuse to change that format. I went to Excite.com when Snap.com went under. I went to Yahoo when Excite's management changed and so to did the layout.While I still maintain a customized page at Excite and have one at MyWay I'll stay with Yahoo for the time being. It's too much trouble to move the Reminders, Sports teams, News stories, Weather, TV listings, Movies theaters, etc. The Reminders being the worst. All the birthdays and anniversaries, yuk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freddy Posted November 25, 2003 Share Posted November 25, 2003 I say we all go to yahoo and sign up for as many free accounts as possible. Then subscribe to every sh*t list possible and to encourage all the spam possible. The cost to them for the additional bandwidth and storage would help offset the inconvenience to us for their spam (and respaming) practices.I have little sympathy or mercy for companies with such practices.I had a similar experiece as Prelude with a computer newletter that shall remain nameless. First they wouldn't let me unsubscibe or change my settings w/o a password. Then they wouldn't stop sending me email after I managed to unsubscribe. Only after threats to submit their address to blacklisting services did I get a response. I know blacklisting is bad practice, but its something that obviously scares some companies into action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corrine Posted November 26, 2003 Share Posted November 26, 2003 I agree with Ibe & EdP. I've also been a long-time user of MyWay. Even though I've added links to it, I seldom look at the "My Page" anyway so don't miss anything. (My startup page is "blank" -- loades really fast After I switched to MyWay, the spam on my Yahoo account practically disappeared! Yet, I get very, very little spam at MyWay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest genaldar Posted November 26, 2003 Share Posted November 26, 2003 The problem with switching is the hassle of notifying all of your contacts, newsletters, website memberships, etc. I recently changed my spam account (I had one set up for spam for years, but its been acting up so I now have misc. websites registered under my old online rpg email) and doing that was a hassle, without any contacts being involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted November 26, 2003 Author Share Posted November 26, 2003 My problem is that I use SBCglobal for my DSL connection so I'm married to Yahoo(and it's a shotgun wedding). I don't use my sbcglobal email for anything other then having something that my ISP can contact me with and for my webhost to email me on should my domain name be out of order. So it is spam free. I get one mail a month on it and I'd like to keep it that way so having to resetup yahoo just to tell it to shut the heck up is anoying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 26, 2003 Share Posted November 26, 2003 Corrine My startup page is "blank" -- loades really fastMine too. Same reason.Sometimes when I initiate my browser I may want to go to a site I saw on TV or in a magazine. Why wait for my homepage to come up when when I don't need it. Granted it doesn't take long for my homepage to come up, I'm using cable service, but old habits die hard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted November 26, 2003 Share Posted November 26, 2003 CorrineMy startup page is "blank" -- loades really fastMine too. Same reason.Sometimes when I initiate my browser I may want to go to a site I saw on TV or in a magazine. Why wait for my homepage to come up when when I don't need it. Granted it doesn't take long for my homepage to come up, I'm using cable service, but old habits die hard. My Way (like Google) lists the time it took to load at the top right of the page. I did a test on my fully home page and it took between 1.71-2.10 seconds to load, about as fast as an eye blink. And I have a lot of stuff on this page. Check it out here:http://home.ripway.com/2003-11/34573/Myway.gifI did a test with the default My Way page (no customization). It took between .71 - .87 seconds to load.IMO, having a blank home page merely for speed is like restricting yourself to text only email. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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