Posts about Yahoo

Before Blogspot and Wordpress, and even before Google, there was Geocities. But no more. If you have files or content stored on Yahoo's GeoCities service, be sure to back up or move or it by Monday. That's when the service, an early free web host and nerd training ground, closes down forever. It's like part of my lonely, geeky adolescence is about to die.  More Â»

You may have noticed that Flickr recently updated their logo to include "From Yahoo!" If you're at all familiar with Flickr, you can probably guess how well this is going over with the users.  More Â»

In a schoolyard bully battle royale, Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces to target Google, with the aim of relieving the company of its search engine dominance.  More Â»

A Congressional panel is looking into drafting new online privacy laws, but Yahoo says such legislation isn't necessary because the e-industry has done such a bang-up job of regulating itself.  More Â»

If Microsoft has its way bending your brain with a megabucks ad budget for its forthcoming Bing search engine, someday you'll replace the verb "googled" with "binged." Which could give new meaning to the phrase "binged and purged," but whatever.   More Â»

If you're in a pickle with Yahoo and regular customer service isn't helping you, these phone numbers may be of service:  More Â»

PC Mag has assembled a list of instructions on how to wipe your account from a long list of websites, including Classmates.com (you'll have to call), Windows Live ID (it's complicated), and Friendster (ha ha ha). In many cases, canceling is as straightforward as clicking a link and authorizing the cancellation, but it's nice to see all the phone numbers and tips collected in one spot.  More Â»

The ease with which a student was able to reset Sarah Palin's Yahoo email password highlights a vulnerability of so-called "challenge questions" designed to verify your identity: if the questions are about personal details from your life, there's a risk that somewhere out there on the web, that info is visible to the public. That might be a realistic risk only for public figures, but it's also possible that friends or family members could answer your questions with a little guesswork. If you want better security, make up fake answers that you'll remember.  More Â»

When Yahoo announced last week that they were turning off their DRM-restricted music store store in September, thereby abandoning customers with songs that would no longer play, people were understantably angry. At the time, Yahoo suggested you burn the songs to CD while you still can, then re-rip them into unprotected MP3 files—but that was a lousy solution that took time and money, and resulted in lower-quality audio files. Now they've come back with a proper solution that seems to more than make up for the trouble—especially if we can believe what their spokesperson told the LA Times.  More Â»

Yet another example of why DRM sucks: Yahoo! is shutting down their music store. Don't worry, all you have to do is burn all that music to CD then re-upload it to your computer. As Ars Technica says: "Sure, you'll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that's a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn't download it illegally or just buy it on CD!" [Ars Technica]  More Â»

If your email account is with Google or Yahoo, your days of seeing phishing emails from fake eBay or PayPal addresses should be over. Google announced last week that it's now using DomainKeys to verify messages really do come from paypal.com or ebay.com—if they don't, they never even make it to your In Box. This is possible because eBay and PayPal are now making sure "that all their email is signed with DomainKeys and DKIM." Since Yahoo! also uses DomainKeys and DKIM (they developed it, in fact), phishing attacks for Yahoo! Mail accounts should also disappear.   More Â»

Yahoo's "Unlimited" email, isn't. [WSJ]  More Â»

Yahoo rejects Microsoft's takeover bid for reals for reals. We are safe from the threat of the creation of the world's largest, crappiest, search engine...for now. [AP]  More Â»

Microsoft has been trying to make Google seem like a threat to privacy, when in fact it's both of them," says Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). "We may now have two companies that will rival the National Security Agency in their ability to compile detailed profiles of users wherever they go online."  More Â»

Microsoft is interested in buying Yahoo! [Ars Technica]  More Â»

Yahoo Personals surprised technology guru Russell Shaw with a charge for $74.95 when he signed up for Yahoo Voice. Russell had let his subscription to Yahoo Personals lapse last February and ignored Yahoo's repeated entreaties to renew his membership. He assumed his account was cancelled, told his credit card company not to authorize any new charges, and did not inform Yahoo when he lost his credit card last May.  More Â»

Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired found that he was no longer in need of his Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo! Music subscriptions now that the RIAA is starting to warm up to the idea of DRM-free music.  More Â»

A friend of a friend's Yahoo account was hacked and now all the guy's personal and professional contacts are getting emails saying that he's stuck in Africa and needs to be wired money immediately. Here's some solutions we found that might help him reset his password.  More Â»

Seth Godin thinks that for all the talk about privacy, what people really object to is being "surprised."

If your credit card company called you up and said, "we've been looking over your records and we see that you've been having an extramarital affair. We'd like to offer you a free coupon for VD testing..." you'd freak out, and for good reason.  More Â»

Adobe and Yahoo! are testing a new program that lets publishers place advertisements in PDF documents, reports Reuters. "The Adobe service allows publishers to generate revenue by including text-based ads linked to the content of an Adobe PDF (portable document format) page in a separate side panel."  More Â»

Using the names of companies accused of being DS-Max (now known as Innovage) subsidiaries/affiliates on Ripoffreport and a list on DS-Max The Aftermath, I did a search of Monster, Hot Jobs, and other job sites to pick out real ads that are out there and should be avoided.   More Â»

Yahoo Photos will close on September 20th, according to this internal Target newsletter. Users will have until that date to move their online scrapbooks to a partner site, like Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, Photobucket  More Â»

AT&T DSL subscribers who use their ISP email will now have the pleasure of seeing ads in their email service. That they pay for. Did we say that already?  More Â»

Where have we seen this website before? —MEGHANN MARCO  More Â»

Reader Andrew has been a Yahoo! email paid subscriber for 8 years. He also has a Yahoo! Small Business account for his website and has a paid Flickr account. He also participates in Yahoo! Answers. Sadly, Andrew said something on Yahoo! Answers that Yahoo! feels violated their TOS. The result? They deleted Andrew's entire account, including his email, Flickr, and website hosting. He was given no warning. Yahoo! says his account was "suspended." Andrew writes:

Now, lets have a quick look at that word - suspended. If a student get suspended from school that usually means they are back within a few days or a week or so. Yahoo!'s definition of suspended means removed permanently. This included all emails I had saved over the last eight years, my pre-paid Yahoo! Small Business Account, my FLICKR account, IM account - the lot. To top it off, and here is the sweet bit, even though I OWN the domain name transformertattoo.com I cannot move it to another hosting service because the contact email address, yup, you guessed it, was my deleted Yahoo! email address. "

Eric writes:  More Â»

Yahoo launched a new personal finance today site to help you manage your money.  More Â»

Yahoo is blocking emails sent by Time Warner Cable Road Runner customers who were formerly with Comcast. When consumers complain to Time Warner Cable, the company essentially tells them to call up Yahoo themselves.   More Â»

Viacom workers have to agree that Viacom owns anything they ever make in the "universe," in, "perpetuity." Use of the Yahoo! Toolbar expressly prohibits use of the technology to operate nuclear facilities.  More Â»

Reader JP, sends us this little tidbit about accessing online information after someone has passed away. From CNET: As more and more people move their lives, address books, calendars, financial information, online, they are taking a risk that some information formerly filed away in folders and desks might never be recovered. That is, unless they share their passwords, which poses security threats.  More Â»

It seems our buddy Target Corp. doesn't like it when bloggers post store policies on the Internets. Their rational response? Duh, lawsuit.   More Â»

Truth in advertising, from the Yahoo! homepage.  More Â»

AObloatage notwithstanding, it would be remiss to end this week/month of fun without linking to the August '05 agreements AOL made with future NY governor Spitzer regarding revising the ISP's niggardly retention tactics.  More Â»

Don't you hate it when you try to go to BestBuy.com and accidentally replace the first vowel with a w? Or put a hyphen between best and buy? And you end up at one of those squatter advertisement sites, designed specifically to garner profits from the typos or ignorance of others?  More Â»

  More Â»

As if you didn't already get enough Spam, AOL and Yahoo are going to start charing companies to allow them to bypass your spam filter:  More Â»

Mike Harris provides this epic tale of woe dealing with Yahoo! Domains:

I detest the support staff of Yahoo Domains. I detest them with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. Not only has the experience entirely soured me on Yahoo! Domains, it has soured me on pretty much any for-pay Yahoo service.  More Â»

Remember back before everyone had blogs and everyone had portal or news sites? Back then, even those with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome could use their tiny misshapen hands and three stumpy fingers to Control+V their way to Dot Com millions. Somewhere in the bowels of the Internet, a single person wrote content, and everyone else got rich cut and pasting him, largely through the hysterically over credulous advertising endorsement of companies no longer with us. Man, those were the days.  More Â»

Mike L writes:

Received a letter from SBC regarding my DSL service - informing me that my 1-year contract is about to expire. And, for my convenience, they will automatically renew my service (currently paying ~$26 per mo.) for "just $34.95 per month, with absolutely NO TERM commitment!*" The letter went on to encourage me to take "absolutely NO ACTION" It boasted that this "low monthly rate" is "$5 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Starter (a service not listed on their website, not that I know what a "rack rate" is...), and $15 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Express (I was starting to feel the sensation of being "racked"). This lovely letter is signed, sincerely, by one Jason Crawford of the SBC Yahoo! Marketing team.