Special attention: Yahoo Mail users, including @snet.net, @sbcglobal.net, @att.net

Have you had a chance to check any of the financial news lately? Yahoo (stock symbol YHOO) is an absolutely desperate company right now. They are trying anything to make money and frankly they are circling the drain. 5 years ago Microsoft wanted to buy them for 48 billion dollars. Today, they are begging business to buy them for scraps — around 3-4 billion. Last year Yahoo forced its mail users to turn off the ad blocker to keep using Yahoo Mail. That is what I had to do for you for many of you, if you didn’t do it on your own. .

Yahoo is now going to new lengths to push ads, especially video ads on their customers. Yahoo does not have a great reputation with ads. In the not too recent past, their ads served up malware to anyone who simply looked at them (no click necessary). Read the article here — https://blog.malwarebytes.org/threat-analysis/2015/08/large-malvertising-campaign-takes-on-yahoo/

Tonight, I received a very troubling report from a client. She claimed that upon emptying the Spam folder she saw a video that she couldn’t easily get out of. The reason you are seeing that Video in the Spam box? It’s an ad from Yahoo. The one sure fire solution I can think of is, close your browser and re open Yahoo Mail.

Before I get to the proposed solutions — let me state my main directive — It’s time to get off of Yahoo Mail. I am not suggesting to delete the account right now. I am suggesting a transition, by implementing one of two solutions below.

The other thing I want to let all of my customers know is that their @snet.net, @sbcglobal.net, or @att.net e-mail accounts now have no connection with the phone company. They are nothing more than free Yahoo accounts. Even back when the Connecticut phone company was ATT, customers lost their status of having a “premium Yahoo account” several years before the sale to Frontier was complete in the fall of 2014. This email is not meant to disparage Frontier. They have no responsibility for those legacy e-mail accounts. In fact, Frontier has a new e-mail account that they would prefer you use.

If I could recommend one of two solutions to you —
1. If you don’t have one already, create a free Gmail account. You can probably make the address before the @ sign similar to your Yahoo powered account. Have all Yahoo Mail forwarded to the Gmail account and simply use Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar. Ads can still be blocked on Gmail and even if they couldn’t, Google uses small text based ads.
2. If you would like a paid account that you truly own, I will recommend Fastmail as I have before ($20). Surely, there are other great paid e-mail providers out there as well.  Have all Yahoo Mail forwarded to your Fastmail account. I am certain that a “yourname(at)fastmail(dot)com” could be created. They have a calendar and contacts built right in to the e-mail. The e-mail, calendar and contacts can be synchronized with your Android or iPhone. As it is a paid service, Fastmail never serves up ads, and they offer courteous e-mail support to customers.

** Then, at some point down the road, perhaps 3 to 6 months, everyone you regularly know will know your new e-mail address. At that point, it would be OK to delete your Yahoo account.
*** You should never rely on one e-mail account. You should have a primary and a backup. So whether that be a Gmail and a Fastmail or a one of those and an Outlook.com (Microsoft’s service which is still pretty decent), you are in a stronger position when you have alternatives. Comcast’s webmail doesn’t seem to mind if you block ads. Frontier users may want to consider the new Frontier e-mail accounts as their secondary account.

Feel free to pass this bulletin on to anyone you know who uses Yahoo Mail (especially those who use those legacy addresses from the ATT days).