Last month, Yahoo blew the lid off a controversial data breach, disclosing that 500 million accounts were compromised in a hacking that occurred two years ago.
Just before the company could reorient itself from the mountainous amount of scrutiny it suffered following the scandal, another exposé surfaced, which confirmed Yahoo built and used a software to scan emails for the benefit of U.S. intel.
News of the breach and email scanning are reasons enough for Yahoo users to shift to another email service for fear of being compromised. Even Verizon doesn't feel confident with Yahoo after the surfeit of reportage, attempting to slash its acquisition deal significantly.
But users will find trouble ahead should they transition to another email client. The Associated Press reported that at the beginning of October, Yahoo has disabled its email forwarding feature, which redirects emails sent to a user's Yahoo mail account to another address. With email forwarding disabled, users are locked into Yahoo Mail with no clear exit, amid the still unresolved panic brought on by the colossal breach.
Those who have set up automatic email forwarding pre-October can shun their worry, since the feature won't be affected. However, users who have yet to enable the feature will find themselves struggling to do so, let alone shift to a rival client.
Yahoo didn't make a comment on the change, save for a notice on its help site informing users that it has temporarily disabled the feature as it works to improve it.
"All of a sudden it's under development," small tech business owner Brian McIntosh told AP. "And only at Yahoo," he added. McIntosh isn't the only one who finds the timing suspicious; other users have suspected the company of intentionally blocking the gates to avoid losing active users.
Email forwarding is a basic and essential feature for those who don't want to miss important messages addressed to their old account. Even before the plight of email, postal mail administered this kind of service. It seems suspicious that a common and relatively benign feature has been completely disabled for improvement reasons. If this is Yahoo's strategy to convince users to remain using the service, it's a debatable and frustrating one.
As a stopgap solution, users can switch on the vacation responder, which automatically replies to messages with the proper address attached for forwarding.
The record of Yahoo's monthly active users has been on a steady decline, clocking in at approximately 250 million this summer. Users are switching to rival emailing services like Gmail, which boasts 1 billion monthly active users.
Verizon is currently in an ongoing process to acquire the company originally for $4.8 billion but is apprehensive to shell out that amount of money given the bad press it's been dealing with lately.
