Is Yahoo! Really Against Spam?

Yahoo! recently announced a program to let direct marketers bypass their e-mail filter systems for a small fee. The cost is about a penny per e-mail. The plan is also intended for senders of non-commercial messages such as newsletters.

E-mail marketers of course have to abide by certain standards to participate. All recipients must have "opted-in." This warrants some skepticism. People who have genuinely asked to receive commercial mailings are few and far between.

I have personally had a Yahoo! account for sometime, and have experienced some questionable activities on their part. For example, Yahoo! operates their own e-mail marketing service known as, "Yahoo! Delivers" (crap to your inbox). Users check what topics interest them, and then receive targeted spam.

Of course, smart users didn't check any topics, and hence didn't get spammed. Unfortunately, Yahoo! seemed to "forget" this on multiple occasions, and reset user preferences to receive spam for countless different topics. Yahoo! presumably profits from each e-mail delivered.

In the end, Yahoo! wants to prevent spam that costs them money, but is pro-spam when it makes them money.

In all fairness, Yahoo! provides free e-mail to millions of users. "Free" of course is a relative term. They are constantly looking to monetize traffic generated to their website and other services. Any users of free e-mail accounts should never fool themselves into thinking their address really belongs to them. Yahoo! decides what e-mail gets delivered, and that can include spam.

The same can be said for most e-mail accounts hosted by major internet service providers. Users of the now-defunct ISPs run by Excite and AT&T know this. If you really want a portable e-mail address that you control, register your own domain.

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