Yahoo Email Recycling Nightmare
by Fox Van Allen for Techlicious
Apparently, Yahoo’s attempts to free up user names and email addresses – has backfired. Account holders are now left open to serious privacy concerns.–PC Pitstop.
A short while ago, Techlicious reported on Yahoo’s effort to recycle old, dormant user names. Predictably, there was a lot of handwringing over the idea. While it’d be great to free up desirable but long-dormant user names, there was a lot of concern over whether Yahoo could do it without creating pressing privacy and security concerns. Still, the email provider suggested accounts really could be “recycled safely and securely.”
As it turns out, Yahoo was wrong and the skeptics were right. According to a lengthy report by Information Week, owners of newly recycled Yahoo accounts are receiving plenty of email intended for the address’s previous holder. And it’s not just spam, either – incredibly sensitive personally identifying information is winding up in the hands of total strangers.
Under the terms of Yahoo’s controversial plan, any email address that had not been signed in to for over a year would be deactivated and offered to new users. Yahoo would then monitor the account for 30 days, send bounce notifications to email senders, unsubscribe the account from bulk lists and even implement a new type of email filtering technology. Unfortunately, those efforts are falling well short.
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This excerpt appears with the permission of Techlicious.
