Lots of people are commenting on Yahoo!’s announcement that they will begin offering unlimited email storage beginning in May.
That’s nice – but my recent experience with Yahoo! mail was the discovery when I went to log in that they had declared my account inactive and deleted all of my mail. They said it was because I hadn’t logged in in four months or longer. This despite the fact that I regularly log in and use Yahoo! instant messaging, using the same account name and password.
You’d think that a company that can offer unlimited mail storage, as well as one that makes their authentication available as a single-sign-on facility could notice that a user is logging in to their account on a different Yahoo! service before deleting all their mail.
When I complained to Yahoo! the answer I got was:
Once an account has been de-activated, it is not possible for the Yahoo!
Mail team to retrieve any previously stored information.
Yahoo! Premium Mail accounts do not require access to protect from
dormancy or possible de-activation.
Not very helpful, to say the least.
I for one, won’t be relying on Yahoo! mail for anything I really care about, not matter how much storage they’re offering.
Oren Sreebny 