Comments on: Yahoo Mail adds SMS, drops beta tag

Now you can send text messages to mobile phones from Yahoo Mail and send IMs to people using Windows Live Messenger.

[Stating]

New Anti-spam Features?

Nope. For all its shiny features the new Yahoo Mail still makes me sift through mounds of garbage spam. A few simple features cut could spam volume down tremendously. Maybe Jerry will cosider these:

1) Block email originating from foreign country domains at user discretion

2) Increase filter limit from 50 to unlimited

3) Increase blocked list from 100 to unlimited

[niravabhavsar]

Good thoughts

How do you block email originating from spoofed emails? Most of the spam people receive comes from some spoofed hotmail, comcast, gmail, aol, yahoo or other US portal ids.
I agree with increasing filter limit and blocked list for those who get a lot of spam.
I don't visit shady sites or subscribe to all kinds of garbage groups. And, that works for me. I have seen only 15 messages in last 6 months that were able to fool yahoo spam filters. It seems unluckily your id has become part of some database that is shared by spammers. Good luck.

[gsmiller88]

Free POP access?

Does Yahoo Mail offer free POP access for clients such as Outlook
or Apple Mail?

If not they can sing "new features" till their ass bleeds but that's not
going to make me want to switch from Gmail!

[flemingho]

It would be nice...

...if POP was free. It used to be, back in the day, and it was years before Yahoo (and Hotmail??) made it a paid service.

I suspect GMail will follow suit at some point in the future. Right now, they're just trying to hook users.

It's the only possible way to make easy money out of email for these companies.

[sonopasquale]

Yahoo Mail adds SMS, drops beta tag

If this article refers to ATT/Yahoo, someone should inform them! I just finished online chat and they knew nothing about it, referring me to the beta mail site. They are incompetent.
Of course, this is the reason I don't like using ATT/Yahoo and use Firefox/Google/Thunderbird.

[ckon3]

what a silly comment

Seriously, you took the time to type that? If you're the type of person who bases their decisions to use something on whether some customer service person new the ins and outs of something that isn't in their area of the business... well, you probably need to stick to your crayons.

[TV James]

Nice Press Release

Even with your "Unfortunately" paragraph, this still reads like a repurposed press release.

I don't actually still use my Yahoo! Mail account, but just in case I want to, I go in every 8-10 to clear it out. It was always a secondary address that I didn't really give out to more than a few people and certainly not in the last 3 years.

Yet in any given 8 days period, it can amass 10 new pieces of spam in the inbox and 300-600 in the spam folder.

It's nice to think they're trapping spam, but at that rate, some of it ought to be so obvious that it doesn't even really need to be delivered to my spam folder.

That makes looking for any "false positives" a pointless task.

300-400 messages in 8 days does not cause me to be impressed at their spam-identifying ability, it makes me frustrated at their inability to block legitimate and obvious spam from even getting this close to me.

It's even more annoying because I know a lot of people do use Yahoo! Mail and I work for a non-profit. We send emails about our work to those who request them. And we're often blocked or have our email delivered to the spam folder by Yahoo! despite following all kinds of best practices and employing one of the larger ESPs who have an ISP-relationship with Yahoo!

I believe that if more were even dropped before it hit the spam folder, less spam would be aimed at Yahoo!

Because right now, even in the spam folder, people can open, view images and click. And as cheap as email is, they only need a few people to do that in order for it to be worth it to the spammers.

[niravabhavsar]

Spam sucks

Quite opposite to yours; here is my experience. I had a yahoo mail account that I haven't used in last 2 years; except for once in a while to keep it open. Earliest spam in my inbox was from 3/25/2007. There are total of 43 mails. 20 are from one of the yahoo groups I signed up for. That means I received only 23 spam messages in my inbox in last 5 months. Not bad at all.
Here is what I DON'T do.
- Click on "you've won an iPod" ad.
- Post my emails on webpages with "@" sign. Always use "my.name""at""yahoo"."com".
- Visit porn sites
- Use unsecured wi-fi

WWW is still wild wild west. It is very easy to spoof email due to lack of standardization. Gmail is spammed less because it is relatively new and not all spammers have built databases that contain them.
good day

[JoeF2]

Still has annoying flaws

One thing that annoys me to no end on the new Yahoo Mail is that when I log in, it shows a news page.
Who in the world thought that I want to see a news page when I want to check my email???
And that apparently can't be switched off.
Before they can become relevant again, they need to lose the attitude of showing things down the users' throat. Until then, I use Gmail and keep my Yahoo account pretty much dormant.

[flemingho]

There is an option

.. to jump straight to your inbox after you have logged in. But it could be only available for Mail Plus subscribers.

[clumpkin]

You get what you pay for

I created my Yahoo account in the late 1990's when I was changing ISP's almost monthly and hated sending out email address changes. I have used that account as my primary all these years and the only real complaint I had was the tags placed in my sent emails and the ads. I didn't sign up right away but eventually broke down and forked over the $20 for the Plus service and I have never looked back. Without the ads and the tag line at the end of every email I send it is worth the $20 a year. I have had a Gmail account for a couple of years now and I rarely even look at it. To me the interface is counter-intuitive. I think Yahoo does a relatively good job at blocking spam because before I was getting over 70 emails a day in my inbox and now it is more like 2. Anyone who says they should be able to get them all should try it and see just how hard it is. I've been using the beta interface over a year and while it has had it's quirks it has worked reliably for me.

[WileySkier]

Get Yahoo Plus

Want POP access, no ads, unlimited storage, go directly to your inbox, etc.? Upgrade to Yahoo plus...it's only $20 / year.

If I had to gripe, you got more for your money over the standard mail service a couple of years ago, so hopefully they'll add some additional features. This interface is much better than it used to be (IMO) and just getting rid of the ads alone is worth it to me.

[gsmiller88]

Why pay?

If you're like me the ads aren't much of a problem because I use
Apple Mail all the time with my free POP access provided by Gmail.
You practically get all those features with Gmail (they only display
text ads) and it doesn't cost you a dime.

[JoeF2]

Gmail has these things for free

Gmail has free POP3, and only unobtrusive ads.
I block the Yahoo ads anyway, with Adblocker in Firefox. Google's text ads are ok, since they don't scream at me and don't distract from reading mail. They are just there when I want them. Google got this right, Yahoo is still way behind the curve.

[dbo90]

The person receiving the text message in he celphone from yahoomail...does he get charge if he respond via text to yahoomail????