Yahoo discontinues Mail Classic, forces users to upgrade to the new version
Yahoo has announced closing down Mail Classic but forces users to switch to new version that goes through your e-mails to deliver relevant ads.
Yahoo has announced discontinuing older versions of its e-mail clients including the Mail Classic. Moreover, the company has made it mandatory for all Mail users to switch to the new version of the service, and accept a Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that allows Yahoo to scan your e-mails.
“Beginning the week of June 3, 2013, older versions of Yahoo! Mail (including Yahoo! Mail Classic) will no longer be available. After that, you can access your Yahoo! Mail only if you upgrade to the new version. You should have received an email from Yahoo! letting you know that your account required an upgrade,” says Yahoo in a help post.
On scanning of e-mails, Yahoo says the “acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content, which Yahoo! uses to deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse protection”.
Users have the option to opt out of the ads through Yahoo’s Ad Manager. However, if you don’t want to be scanned, Yahoo clearly says either you should go to another IMAP client or close their account.
Yahoo’s announcement regarding closing down older versions of its e-mail clients comes months after the company rolled out a new design for the e-mail service on mobile as well as desktop platforms. The redesigned Yahoo has fewer buttons, improved search and cleaner interface including more space to view and compose emails. Prior to the announcement, Yahoo had allowed users to use the old version.
While many may think Yahoo’s new e-mail policies are invasion of privacy, Yahoo isn’t the first major e-mail service provider to scan your mails to deliver relevant ads. Google’s Gmail service already analyses your e-mails. Here’s what Gmail says on scanning your e-mails:
“…if you’ve recently received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting. On the other hand, if you’ve reported these messages as spam, you probably don’t want to see that deal. This type of automated processing is how many email services provide features like spam filtering and spell checking.”
“You can opt-out of the use of additional information from the Ads Preferences page. If you do opt-out, you may still see contextual ads based on the message you are reading as well as other relevant ads.
If you don’t want to see ads in Gmail, you can choose to use Gmail’s basic HTML view, or POP or IMAP.”