Yahoo: Naive, Exploitative, Contrived
While I never explicitly signed up for a Yahoo! account, those of you who have my email address may be vaguely aware that my email provider is owned by Yahoo! and, as such, requires me to use a Yahoo! profile in order to check my email.
I used my Yahoo! owned email address to sign up to a number of unrelated services, some of which (notably Flickr) became Yahoo! partners and automatically integrated my Yahoo! and third party logins. I observed these partnerships with no small amount of suspicion, as they added no real convenience for me, but allowed Yahoo! greater control over my online content.
Yahoo!'s quality of service has always hovered around the level of "acceptable because it's free, and you chose to use it". But I never chose to sign up to Yahoo!; their services are not unique or superior, and some revisions of their email interface have been buggy, and glacial in speed. I had a Yahoo! account created for me automatically when Yahoo! purchased my webmail provider in 1997. I chose to keep that account active in order to maintain my access to the myriad of accounts I created with other websites using my (newly) Yahoo! owned email address. And so it came to pass that, in 2010, I am one of the few self-identified geeks who will publicly admit to continuing to use Yahoo!'s services.
I briefly played with Yahoo!'s profile tools and Yahoo! Answers (all aboard the trollercoaster!), but eventually updated my profile with fake information (as Yahoo! would not allow me to remove information from my profile; only change it). My Yahoo! profile now identifies me only through my handle (876).
Recently, during the fallout from the Google Buzz oversharing faux pas, Yahoo! created new services:
- They created Yahoo! Buzz, a news aggregator similar to Digg
- They created Yahoo! Pulse, a social networking aggregator similar to Google Buzz, with Facebook and Twitter connectivity
- They began an opt-out service called Yahoo! Updates, which broadcasts your actions on Yahoo! partner websites (such as Flickr) to Yahoo! mail users who list you as a contact.1
Since I use Yahoo! for my primary email address (as I've never used the same ISP for more than a few years, and as such do not use ISP-provided email), I do *everything* through my Yahoo! email account. I do not wish to explicitly broadcast my updates to external websites with relation to my email address to people whom I may have only contacted once, years ago, even if the updates in question are publicly visible. I do not object to people being able to see things that I explicitly post online, but I do object to Yahoo! creating and sharing metadata about my online activities with people I've previously contacted,2 especially if Yahoo! haven't explicitly gained my approval to share this information.
I disabled the Yahoo! public profile and Yahoo! Updates service that were automatically linked with my email account before the potential for implicit oversharing became an issue. But I'm still concerned about the potential for Yahoo! to create new opportunities to overshare information about my online activies or email contacts; furthermore, I think that their new partnership with Facebook3 will encourage Yahoo! to find new, creative ways to subtly violate my privacy.
I've been meaning to switch email providers for at least a year, but have always felt daunted by the Sisyphean task of updating my email address. In the last thirteen years, I've used a lot of online services, and contacted a lot of people.
Now, I need to find a cheap/robust/accessible/worthy email provider to see me through the next thirteen years. Feel free to share your recommendations..
1. This means that, while Yahoo! updates won't automatically share your contact list, it also doesn't allow you to see who you're sharing your updates with. EFF explains this new feature in detail.
2. My objections to Facebook's conduct are similar. Facebook apologists please take note: this is not simply a matter of "not putting something online if you don't want other people to see it".
3. I deleted almost all the content I've ever posted to Facebook in response to their complete disrespect for their users' control over the privacy of the data *and metadata* that they submit when they use Facebook.
Relevant: How to delete a Yahoo! profile
I've surely just set the record for the greatest number of exclamation marks I've ever used in a blog post.
I used my Yahoo! owned email address to sign up to a number of unrelated services, some of which (notably Flickr) became Yahoo! partners and automatically integrated my Yahoo! and third party logins. I observed these partnerships with no small amount of suspicion, as they added no real convenience for me, but allowed Yahoo! greater control over my online content.
Yahoo!'s quality of service has always hovered around the level of "acceptable because it's free, and you chose to use it". But I never chose to sign up to Yahoo!; their services are not unique or superior, and some revisions of their email interface have been buggy, and glacial in speed. I had a Yahoo! account created for me automatically when Yahoo! purchased my webmail provider in 1997. I chose to keep that account active in order to maintain my access to the myriad of accounts I created with other websites using my (newly) Yahoo! owned email address. And so it came to pass that, in 2010, I am one of the few self-identified geeks who will publicly admit to continuing to use Yahoo!'s services.
I briefly played with Yahoo!'s profile tools and Yahoo! Answers (all aboard the trollercoaster!), but eventually updated my profile with fake information (as Yahoo! would not allow me to remove information from my profile; only change it). My Yahoo! profile now identifies me only through my handle (876).
Recently, during the fallout from the Google Buzz oversharing faux pas, Yahoo! created new services:
- They created Yahoo! Buzz, a news aggregator similar to Digg
- They created Yahoo! Pulse, a social networking aggregator similar to Google Buzz, with Facebook and Twitter connectivity
- They began an opt-out service called Yahoo! Updates, which broadcasts your actions on Yahoo! partner websites (such as Flickr) to Yahoo! mail users who list you as a contact.1
Since I use Yahoo! for my primary email address (as I've never used the same ISP for more than a few years, and as such do not use ISP-provided email), I do *everything* through my Yahoo! email account. I do not wish to explicitly broadcast my updates to external websites with relation to my email address to people whom I may have only contacted once, years ago, even if the updates in question are publicly visible. I do not object to people being able to see things that I explicitly post online, but I do object to Yahoo! creating and sharing metadata about my online activities with people I've previously contacted,2 especially if Yahoo! haven't explicitly gained my approval to share this information.
I disabled the Yahoo! public profile and Yahoo! Updates service that were automatically linked with my email account before the potential for implicit oversharing became an issue. But I'm still concerned about the potential for Yahoo! to create new opportunities to overshare information about my online activies or email contacts; furthermore, I think that their new partnership with Facebook3 will encourage Yahoo! to find new, creative ways to subtly violate my privacy.
I've been meaning to switch email providers for at least a year, but have always felt daunted by the Sisyphean task of updating my email address. In the last thirteen years, I've used a lot of online services, and contacted a lot of people.
Now, I need to find a cheap/robust/accessible/worthy email provider to see me through the next thirteen years. Feel free to share your recommendations..
1. This means that, while Yahoo! updates won't automatically share your contact list, it also doesn't allow you to see who you're sharing your updates with. EFF explains this new feature in detail.
2. My objections to Facebook's conduct are similar. Facebook apologists please take note: this is not simply a matter of "not putting something online if you don't want other people to see it".
3. I deleted almost all the content I've ever posted to Facebook in response to their complete disrespect for their users' control over the privacy of the data *and metadata* that they submit when they use Facebook.
Relevant: How to delete a Yahoo! profile
I've surely just set the record for the greatest number of exclamation marks I've ever used in a blog post.