Thanks to Gary at the Balboa Theatre (whose little newsletter is great) for this warning:
On March 28, Yahoo! Groups set everyone’s account to the “Have your advertisers send me mail” option no matter what folks had previously
elected as their preference. Because this has gone from an opt-in service to an opt-out one, if you are a member of a Yahoo! Groups-based email list (or, I
assume, if you have a Yahoo! e-mail account) and have no desire to surrender your inbox to a deluge of mail from Yahoo!’s advertisers, you have to tell them that you don’t want this mail within 60 days — if you don’t say anything, they will just send it.
Here’s how to do it:
– Go to Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) and sign in.
– Go to My Groups and click on Account Info, verify your password if it asks you to, which will bring up your Yahoo ID card.
– Click on ‘Edit Your Marketing Preferences’ and change all those Yes’s back to No’s.
– Click ‘Save Changes.’
MetaGrrrl 
Thanks for the tip…I will pass it along.
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I spoke with my inside contact at Yahoo today and found out that the URL for changing these preferences may have actually been leaked before any announced change and that, in fact, any automatic opting in which Yahoo may be doing will only take effect 60 days from that announcement when it occurs.
In the large block of text at the top of that preferences page are the following key points:
– With the exception of Yahoo! Delivers, all the marketing categories relate to Yahoo!’s own services.
– Your Yahoo! Delivers setting has not been changed.
– If you have not yet received an email regarding your marketing preferences, please be assured that no changes will occur until 60 days after email notices have been sent to all affected users.
Yahoo could have spared themselves a lot of grief by making this clearer.
So, bottom line, Yahoo has not signed you up for more junk mail from just anyone. Yahoo is giving you 60 days to opt out of extra mail from Yahoo and from Yahoo partners. Okay, maybe they aren’t uncool. I’m reserving judgement on whether to put them back in the cool category, but that delicious trout I had at their cafeteria for lunch today certainly does sway me back that direction.
[thanks to my inside connection for his patience with my ranting and tipping me that most of the Yahoo folks he’s talked to think this was handled poorly too]
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I joined Yahoo!groups and started recieving all kinds of junk mail from the group. So I decided to change my email on my profile which didn’t work…. so I elimated the entire account which didn’t work either…. what the hell else can I do? any suggestions?
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