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Yahoo! addresses privacy concerns about freeing up old user IDs

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Yahoo! is making inactive usernames available again with the Yahoo! Wish List site. If an account has been inactive for twelve months, the username is being made available again to others. This move has attracted criticism about potential privacy issues and identity theft.

With the Yahoo! Wish List you can claim an inactive name, and up to five backup preferences if it is not available. After August 7th you will get your username. Critics have worried that in cases where people used Yahoo! Mail as a backup, or somewhere to send account verification emails or password resets, there was a risk of the wrong person being able to see your sensitive data.

Yahoo! addresses privacy concerns about freeing up old user IDs

Yahoo! has responded to this, saying that all personal data in any inactive email account will be deleted, and it will unsubscribe email accounts from any newsletters or email alerts. ‘Merchants, e-commerce sites, financial institutions, social networks, email providers and other online properties’ will be notified that the email address has been deactivated. There is a 30 day period between an account being deactivated and freed up, and Yahoo! is confident that this is long enough for any potential privacy threats to be solved.

In addition, Yahoo! is working with Facebook to create a system where emails intended for an old ID owner will never reach the new ones. They are creating a new header standard that will require email providers to check the age of the account they are mailing – so they will be able to see if the Yahoo! account is new, and not deliver the mail. This means email marketing companies will have to adopt this standard, but Yahoo! has enlisted the help and support of Facebook, who have considerable weight and experience in online identitiy issues.

Getting a nice new ID is a good way to entice users to a service, but recycling old ones is certainly an unusual tactic, and Yahoo! will have to be very careful that there are no privacy disasters, as that could seriously damage its reputation.

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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