Yahoo Explains Why It Recently Disable Automatic Forwarding On Yahoo Mail; Reinstates the Feature

Earlier this month, Yahoo disabled the auto-forwarding feature from its Yahoo Mail email service, leaving people with little choice but to use Yahoo Mail client to check the emails their received on their Yahoo account. The company has now acknowledged the issue, explaining why it all happened, and most importantly, switched email forwarding feature on again. From a BusinessInsider report: "Why the pause? Over the past year, Yahoo Mail has been upgrading its platform. This has allowed us to bring a better search experience to Yahoo Mail, add multiple account support, and improve performance as we quickly scale this new system globally. The feature was temporarily disabled as part of this process," Michael Albers, VP of Yahoo Mail product management, wrote in a blog post. To turn on mail forwarding, go to Settings -- Account in Yahoo Mail and enter your forwarding address. After confirming that you, in fact, control that other address, automatic forwarding should be turned on.

This answer is total BS

[gweilo8888]

If it was simply turned off as part of the upgrade process, it would have been turned back on again silently, without the user having to take action. The fact we're told we have to reenable it shows quite clearly that Yahoo disabled it to prevent folks jumping ship, and has only begrudgingly turned it back on to try and squash the bad publicity that its move generated. It's clearly hoping that most users who would otherwise have used the feature won't realize it has been turned back on.

Re:This answer is total BS

[MightyYar]

IIRC, they did not disable the feature for people who were already using it - so there was nothing to switch back on.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very important point. They temporarily disabled setting a new mail forward while they put in a new system.
The new one checks to make sure you control the new address before spamming your poor victim.
Yahoo sucks, but they got this one right.

Re:This answer is total BS

[aardvarkjoe]

The new one checks to make sure you control the new address before spamming your poor victim.
Yahoo sucks, but they got this one right.

While that sort of a check might be reasonable, it absolutely was not "right" to roll out a new system without having e-mail forwarding in place. To get it "right", they should have had their new system ready to go before rolling it out.

Re: This answer is total BS

[Nacht Elfje]

Should have and could have. No reason was provided why the feature had to be disabled during the upgrade process. So for the lack of transparency and suspicious conditions I'm calling BS on this argument until Yahoo explains otherwise.

Re:

[ottott]

That statement is NOT true! If you had mail forwarding enabled, you will have to manually go and re-enable it yourself. I just confirmed this with my own account.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Except this wasn't the case yesterday when people reported it. It looks like the "fix" has caused you the problem.

Re:

[Oswald McWeany]

You're absolutely right. This has soured me to Yahoo even more than I was before. Not only do they make terrible decisions, they lie to the consumer and act like they think we're fools.

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

I think the reason is as stated, "This has allowed us to bring a better search experience to Yahoo Mail".
They simply needed to be sure they could search your forwarded email as well as your inbox.

Re:

[thegarbz]

If it was simply turned off as part of the upgrade process, it would have been turned back on again silently, without the user having to take action

The fact that users had to take action at all and had a feature temporarily and without notice disabled in a production environment speaks volumes too.

Yahoo can pick one or two of the following:
1. Wilfully and nefariously forcing users to stay on their system.
2. Grossly incompetent at system upgrades on production servers.

Re:

[DavidRawling]

Why not both?

Re:

[thegarbz]

Why not both?

Because someone doesn't know what "one or two" means ;-)

Re:

[Arnold Reinhold]

Given their massive data breach, requiring users to re-establish any forwarding addresses is not a bad security move.

Run from Yahoo ASAP

[ITRambo]

Anyone still using Yahoo needs to jump ship as Yahoo will never be a great company, especially if Verizon purchases it.

Re:

[rtb61]

The thing with those old accounts, is you don't so much jump ship as you simply cast that ship adrift and start using one of your others. If it comes back, it comes back, if it doesn't you just continue to let it drift out in cyberspace, with that ginormous fleet of other cast adrift use account ships, that accountants continue to claim in their sales figures, ghost ships (especially taking into account deceased users)

Real answer

[Nidi62]

We wanted to make sure it was as hard as possible for people to leave until our deal with Verizon went through, as more users equals more money for the deal. It was especially important once people became aware of our massive data breach. But now we need the good PR because Verizon is having second thoughts about the proposed deal and wants to renegotiate terms.

Yahoo's eternal upgrade

[epine]

Now Yahoo just needs to explain what system or software or mental competence they're in the middle of upgrading that causes them not to tell people what's about to happen before it happens.

Sure hope Competence 11.0 is finally the one that ignites self-perception.

Refund

[jlv]

All of you unhappy Yahoo email users should cancel your accounts and ask for a full refund.

Re:

[sims 2]

At&t sends all of my bills and notifications to the premium yahoo mail account that comes with the dsl service so I have all mail from there forwarded to a yahoo address that actually gets checked occasionally.

But it almost always puts the forwarded bills in the spam folder and I don't know why.

Corrected Yahoo's to reflect Real Reason

[Striikerr]

"Why the pause? Over the past year, Yahoo Mail has been upgrading its platform. This has allowed us to bring a better search experience for the NSA to Yahoo Mail, add multiple account support, and improve performance as we quickly scale this new system globally. .."
The NSA needed some improvements for their special search tools. :P

I call bullshit

[ilsaloving]

If this was a required move as part of whatever upgrade they were doing, they would have notified people beforehand to expect it.

The most charitable explanation is that their management is incompetent in failing to provide that heads up.

The most likely explanation was that they quietly tried to close the door on people trying to jump ship, and now they're backpedalling because of the uproar.

I haven't touched Yahoo for many years now, and it seems like they've made it their mission to justify my departure as much as possible.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Spam honeypot

[Tony Isaac]

I've had a yahoo email account for a very long time. I wanted to try it out soon after they introduced the service. After setting up my account, I immediately began receiving spam, and that was without ever sending an email from that account, or telling anyone about the address. Once every year or two, I go back and check on it, just to see if Yahoo has gotten better at getting rid of spam. They haven't. My inbox there is still overflowing with brand new spam messages, despite never having used the ser