For 15 months I have been hitting the “I’ll Do This Later” button on Yahoo’s Privacy Policy every time I open my Yahoo email accounts.

Every single time… for 15 months.

Why?

I’m pissed.

Why am I pissed?

I read it.

It should be called the “Exploitation and Invasion of Privacy Policy”.

Basically they want to read my emails and messages, scan my calendar, my photos & videos and scan my computer files from what I gather. THEY ARE SCANNING MY ATTACHMENTS ??? And of course share them with their partners like Verizon and AOL…

… so they can DO what?

Provide a better service to me.

Yeah right.

If they want to provide better service to me they can STOP scanning my photos, videos, attachments and messages for starters.

I’ve used Yahoo for over 20 years and would have kept using them for another 20 years, but for some reason tech companies think they need to know more about me than I do… so they can place annoying manipulative ads on my computer and who knows what else.

BTW, I pay for the ad free email service for two yahoo accounts. So why do they need to profile me?

So I went looking for another service.

I considered icloud since I already have an account, but I am getting tired of their two-step verification process every time I log in. iCloud is a so, so e-mail service anyway. So I kept looking and researching.

There are a lot of options, but I wanted a solid service and privacy. Not encrypted so the NSA can’t track me privacy. Private as in not reading and sharing my emails and of course NO ads. I expect to pay for it, but no big deal since I stopped paying Yahoo to spy on me.

After narrowing it down, I went with Fastmail. I started with their trial and and then paid and have been using them a year. I REALLY like the service. Plan to open accounts for my kids. Over 40,000 businesses use them include DuckDuckGo and I see why.

But have you ever tried moving your main email?

The problem is that my life was fully integrated with my yahoo email address. It was my login for 100s of sites and services. I told my wife it would take a year to transition. She didn’t believe me, but now I am thinking 2 years. It is still worth it.

Each time I find a site or service using my yahoo address, I change the address to my new one. It’s coming along. My yahoo inbox is dwindling down.

My motivation remains that piracy policy I have to scroll through every-single-day. (“Oath” includes Yahoo, AOL, Verizon and others) Here’s a taste of their policies…

We may collect and combine information when you interact with Oath Services including:

• When you use our Services to communicate with others or post, upload or store content (such as comments, photos, voice inputs, videos, emails, messaging services and attachments).
• Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail.  This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
• When you otherwise use our Services, such as title queries, watch history, page views, search queries, view the content we make available or install any Oath software such as plugins.

It should be illegal to call it a “Privacy Policy”.

But there’s more…

“We’ve also added a class action waiver.”

Gee thanks.

I was paying Yahoo about $60 year for two ad-free accounts and now I am paying Fastmail less for a much better service that allows multiple email addresses and multiple domains on one account.

The point is the next time you have to change email or need to set one up for your kids, I recommend going with one that does not spy on you and that you can keep for life (you can own your own domain with Fastmail and transfer it later).

Again there are other options out there, but I can not speak to them. I just wanted to make you aware there are options out there besides the “free” services. If you want some of your privacy back, changing your email provider might be part of it.

Rant complete.

Cheers,

Michael Bond

PS. The link I provided will give you 10% off Fastmail if you want to try them. They credit my account with $3.60 if you sign up and use their basic service a year – I’ll be rich, rich, rich. So, I thought I would let you know. I don’t really need the credit, but thought you might want the discount.

And I would love to see I made a small dent in this privacy piracy epidemic.

Categories: Perspectives