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Yahoo, Bucking Industry, Scans Emails for Data to Sell Advertisers
- Karishma1234 8y agoI am unable to see why emails and chat applications are still free. We need a paid service where nothing is shared with anyone.
- martokus 8y agoBecause they know everyone that would have ever left them has already done so. Nothing to lose...
- Trochal 8y agoNot all users are clued up on whats happening in the tech world, some users are just users who want an email account.
- lostgame 8y agoSure, and Google is happy to do that, for the layman or the techie. There's just no need, or space, for Yahoo anymore.
- chipotle_coyote 8y agoI think the OP's point is that a lot of "legacy" users on Yahoo -- or on Hotmail[1], or on the free email they got from their ISP when they signed up fifteen years ago -- aren't inclined to move to Gmail unless they're tech-savvy enough to understand the case as to why they should. On the surface, free webmail services seem to be pretty interchangeable. [1]: While Hotmail doesn't technically exist anymore -- it redirects to Outlook.com now -- I know more than one person who got their email account there back when it was Hotmail, still use it, and still refer to it that way. And at least one of those people is someone younger than I am and who's tech-savvy enough to be putting together his own PCs. Anecdata, of course, but I think a good illustration of why services like Yahoo Mail are likely to exist way, way longer than we might think.
- Nition 8y agoThe more traditional email interface on Hotmail/outlook.com isn't bad either. Gmail doesn't even show me the subject line by default when I'm replying.
- mrep 8y agoYeah, tech in general and especially email is annoying to switch from. My parents still use a yahoo email account because they have had it for so long and don't want to get other people to update their contacts.
- wastholm 8y agoSo are you saying everyone should just get with the program and use Gmail? If so, how would this monoculture make the world a better place? To me, having multiple competing providers to choose from sounds preferable.
- unit91 8y agoNo great surprise. The only people still using Yahoo aren't very tech savvy and don't know about the data breach, plaintext passwords, etc.. My guess is Yahoo can get away with this and they know it.
- mtgx 8y agoDidn't Yahoo also promise a few years ago it wouldn't do that (only after they saw a backlash against scanning the emails, I believe).
- stevecalifornia 8y agoTry deleting your Yahoo account. It doesn't work. They say they delete your account but then it wills till be there getting emails. It's impossible to delete your account.
- sulam 8y agoI predict this will have changed recently due to GDPR.
- pimmen 8y agoThey violate multiple GDPR restrictions already by having all kinds of options already pre-checked for you when you click "allow", and hidden no less. https://twitter.com/ow/status/999575371556294656?lang=en https://twitter.com/ow/status/999575371556294656?lang=en
- ballenf 8y agoHonest question: is it better to delete the account or leave it as a placeholder to prevent the name being taken by someone else? I have an ancient yahoo address that gets a lot of spam and a few newsletters, but I'm 99% sure that there are some website credentials out there that still use the address and dozens of contacts who still have it their address book. I started to (try to) delete the account several times and always hesitated out of fear. And when I ask myself "what's the harm in leaving it there?" I can't really come up with a good answer. Also interesting aside, Yahoo/Oath nag me every couple weeks to agree to the new Verizon draconian privacy forfeiture terms. I wonder if they'll eventually block logins and cutoff email forwarding if I never click through. My cynical hunch is that they'll equate logins with consent after updating the TOS to explain this.
- drharby 8y agoIt is risk averse to keep it and functionally useless. Yahoo recycles unused handlrs after a timeout of a few years and scammers find these and still all accounts associated with them. Usecase: friend dies, years later some turkey kid stole his facebook bv his login was yahoo email based and BOOM has access to a lot of social media data.
- lostgame 8y agoI'm personally shocked Yahoo is still a company. I personally don't know anyone daft enough to use their services up here in Canada - even in the US (where I have personally seen the 'average Joe's' tech knowledge - especially in central and southern states - shockingly much less than that in Canada) it seemed folks avoided it, except the lowest-of-the-low in terms of tech knowledge. They have, for the years since AOL was known universally as the worst tech company, seemingly fought for that title. EDIT: Surprised at the downvotes. I'd love to know why.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoThis is a bit off topic from usual discussion but a few years ago a game I play launched, probably around early 2015 or 2016. The dev hosted the game on Yahoo servers, and their incompetency almost killed the game. Their services that dealt with game hosting were constantly going down, grinding to a halt, or just being unwillingly to resolve issues. At the time Yahoo was on its way out of that sector and planning on axing that service. I'm not sure if its closed down yet or not, but thankfully the dev moved over to aws, no problems since then.
- duskwuff 8y agoWhat "Yahoo servers" are you referring to? As far as I'm aware, Yahoo never provided cloud compute services -- the only Yahoo game hosting I'm aware of was for their own in-browser games.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoI don't know, I just have a vague memory of it. All I know is he used Yahoo in some form to help host his game. Whether it was the code itself or just some services, they were awful.
- gnicholas 8y agoPlenty of folks use Yahoo, especially for secondary accounts. Also, when the iPhone launched, the only outside email provider that had 'push' privileges was Yahoo. I remember having a Google > Yahoo email forwarding setup just so I could get my gmail forwarded to me in real-time.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIt's just a matter of time until all companies that sit on a ton of data start using it to make money. There is just no way around it unless they are being forced by law not to do it.
- Barrin92 8y agoit's not just a matter of time. As stated in the article, Google actually reverted its policy on the issue and has since stopped collecting data from user email content. There's nothing inevitable about this. Even apart from law employees can steer the direction of companies, especially in tech where businesses are so dependent on a relatively small number of them. If you think privacy practises at your place of work are bad, bring it up.
- ballenf 8y agoAre you suggesting that Google took a stand on principle and voluntarily gave up gathering more data on users of its free services out of respect for privacy? Or is it perhaps more likely that Google gets enough info from users via others means that it simply wasn't getting enough value out of email scanning? Or maybe starting a trend against email scanning hurts competitors more than it hurts themselves?
- maxxxxx 8y agoI think you are right on. And nothing prevents them from using E-mails in the future again if it makes money.
- Barrin92 8y agoIt is probably all of those things at the same time, and nothing stops employees from wielding considerable power when it comes to influencing decision making on any of those issues. Google was, only a few months ago, forced by its employees to turn down lucrative defence contracts, and has since committed to not participate in them. I think if employees manage to accomplish that we can all manage to improve our privacy practises.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIsn't Yahoo gone? Shouldn't headline be "Verizon-Oath"?
- niij 8y agoIn the same sense that "Google" is gone and we should now be saying Alphabet. That is the holding company, but the brand remains.
- super-serial 8y agoThat's different - Yahoo has completely different owners now whose main business is in a different sector. Headline should read: "Verizon after acquiring Yahoo disregards normal tech-company conventions and snoops on everyone's emails like a scummy ISP."
- rrix2 8y agowhat's the point of finely tuning semantics when it's functionally identical?
- Dylan16807 8y agoGetting people upset with Verizon is a good goal.
- vageli 8y agoGoogle LLC still exists.
- ForHackernews 8y agoDo brands decide to violate user privacy? Or do people make that choice?
- my_usernam3 8y agoFrom the article - Rob Griffin, chief technology officer of digital-ad consultancy Tovo Labs, “is how do you monetize it without the icky factor?” Uhhhhh how about don't read emails? If I have a fantasy football team, please sell me football stuff. If I click on an article relating to health concerns, sell me organic whole foods stuff. Can you imagine someone 20 years ago throwing all your mail into a scanner and saying, "don't worry I'm only checking for keywords and receipts"?
- Joeri 8y agoThis is the thing I find really weird about online advertising. Every other medium has ads based on the content or demographic that most likely reads that content. Those ads are always contextually relevant, sufficiently diverse (rarely will you see the same ad repeated everywhere) and few people find them invasive. Online, however, ads are tailored to you as a person. They chase you around the web, even for products you already decided you didn’t want, and are always vaguely creepy. Why is it that way? Is it really more profitable, or is personalized advertising google’s long con?
- psergeant 8y ago> Why is it that way? If the other methods could target you technically, they would
- tdb7893 8y agoCompanies seem willing to pay more for more targeted advertising and if other mediums could switch over to it they would (the issue is that something like print can't). I'm not sure what other motivation they would have besides profit incentive for it.
- dhimes 8y agoeven for products you already decided you didn’t want Or even more weird, for products you already bought and are unlikely to buy again.
- 8y ago
- Animats 8y agoDoesn't gmail scan your mail for data to target ads?
- ableal 8y agoA couple of years ago a friend sent me a barbershop quartet video and I spent a few days getting hairdresser ads ...
- executesorder66 8y agoSolution: use an adblocker.
- joefkelley 8y agoIn the past. We (I worked on gmail ads during this time) stopped doing it about a year ago. https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
- bpchaps 8y agoIs any of the data used from that collection/analysis still around?
- joefkelley 8y agoNo. I mean, maybe high-level aggregate data like "X% of users got emails about shopping" might still be in some spreadsheet somewhere, or in people's brains. But no, I can't think of a way any personalized data would still be around.
- ianwalter 8y agoThats good, but something tells me I still shouldn't fully trust Google/Gmail with things like this.
- 8y ago
- jim_bailie 8y agoI hate yahoo and all these evil companies with their personal data collection fetishes.
- phailhaus 8y agoIt's because you're not paying for their services.
- jim_bailie 8y agoHa, unfortunately I am.
- gowld 8y agoMost companies sell your data even if you pay.
- paul7986 8y agoThey can read all the spam they want ... it's what yahoo email was built for .. of one your trash email addresses!
- vermooten 8y agoDoes anyone still use yahoo for email? It's a place where spam goes to die.
- GoToRO 8y agoMe.
- oaththrowaway 8y agoOath (Yahoo) doesn't even use Yahoo Mail. We're all on GApps.
- soared 8y agoAre you guys internally talking about bid caching/etc? Curious if its on your radar/in discussion or just a non-point.
- oaththrowaway 8y agoI couldn't tell you, luckily I'm on a different team.
- Nightshaxx 8y agoWhat exactly is Verizon's plan with your company if I may ask? Are they just looking to make money off of existing customers and the few good products they have, or are they going to try and make a move to become a serious silicon valley competitor?
- oaththrowaway 8y agoI can't say what Verizon's plans on for sure, they are pretty hands off from what I can tell. Oath's goal is to be the premier "AdTech" company. According to leadership we're only behind Google and FB. But the division I work in doesn't touch ads so I'm not the best person to talk to.
- 8y ago
- bogomipz 8y agoSo Verizon bought Yahoo a company where every single email account had been known to have been compromised[1], and now they are seeking to monetize those same accounts by scanning their their contents and selling that data to third parties? No wonder the Yahoo hacks and very late disclosure didn't derail the deal. These two basement brands deserve each other. [1] https://www.oath.com/press/yahoo-provides-notice-to-additional-users-affected-by-previously/ https://www.oath.com/press/yahoo-provides-notice-to-addition...
- fancyfish 8y agoThis is a big business for hedge funds too, not just advertisers. Every Uber receipt, every Amazon purchase, every receipt that hits your email inbox. Aggregated and tracked at the product SKU level. That is pure gold for investment research. Few sources of data can match what email inboxes provide. E.g. Superfly Insights [1], Return Path [2] [1] https://alternativedata.org/data_provider/superfly-insights/ https://alternativedata.org/data_provider/superfly-insights/ [2] https://returnpath.com/downloads/know-email-data/ https://returnpath.com/downloads/know-email-data/
- 1024core 8y agoThis is why Amazon no longer lists all of your purchases in your email receipt. It just says "your order of XXX and N more items".
- Scoundreller 8y agoHuh. I guess Facebook’s move away from including someone’s update or message in their notification emails had to do with more than getting you to go to their site...
- manojlds 8y agoLikewise with Twitter
- toomanybeersies 8y agoFacebook still does notification emails? I've been filtering them straight into the trash for the best part of a decade. It seems so backwards to send them when most people check their Facebook more often than their email.
- hutattedonmyarm 8y ago> I've been filtering them straight into the trash for the best part of a decade. Why not just turn them off? I haven't received a single notification email from then in years
- worik 8y agoPaywalled
- sleepychu 8y agoToday the lost hours maintaining my personal mailserver suddenly don't feel so lost!