Yahoo gives an opportunity to users to once again select their preferred IDs that were already taken by others.
Yahoo has made available a large number of inactive usernames and is offering on a first-come first serve basis. The move comes shortly after Yahoo announced deactivating accounts that haven’t been active in over a year.
To snap up those once-claimed usernames, users need to visit Yahoo Wish List page. Users are allowed to submit up to five desired usernames and one contact e-mail address.
Yahoo in a blog post says:
“If your first choice isn’t available, we’ll try one of your backups. In mid-August, you’ll get an email letting you know which of your picks is available, with link to claim it within 48 hours. And just like that, it’s all yours. Your Yahoo username is what you use to log into all our services daily, so we want it to reflect who you really are.”
Yahoo is also taking care of privacy of users who had an e-mail address that may be re-used. On its developer blog, Yahoo explains:
“We encourage anyone using e-mail to communicate with their users, especially for e-commerce and recovering their accounts, to adopt this measure to ensure the security of their users.
To communicate that a username has a new owner to e-commerce sites like “JoesAntiques.com,” or social networking sites like Facebook, we’ll allow them to “ask” for a new type of validation when sending an email to a specific Yahoo! user. The field, which can be requested via an email’s header is called “Require-Recipient-Valid-Since.”
Yahoo has also tied up with Facebook for a solution to address possible concerns.
The company further explains:
“If a Facebook user with a Yahoo! email account submits a request to reset their password, Facebook would add the Require-Recipient-Valid-Since header to the reset email, and the new header would signal to Yahoo! to check the age of the account before delivering the mail.
Facebook users typically confirm their email when they sign up for the service or add new emails to their account, and if the “last confirmed” date that Facebook specifies in the Require-Recipient-Valid-Since header is before the date of the new Yahoo! username ownership, then the email will not be delivered and will instead bounce back to Facebook, who will then contact the user by other means.”
The latest announcement comes shortly after the company discontinued Mail Classic and forced users to switch to the new version of the service, and accept a Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that allowed Yahoo to scan users e-mails, similar to Gmail.