do those yahoos know how to run a mailing list?

[cellio]

I could grow to really dislike Yahoo for mailing lists. I went to their site tonight to investigate a problem someone reported with a list I'm on, and I eventually noticed some text that said, approximately, "by the way, we've suspended your mail because you're bouncing". Interesting -- I've seen no evidence of bouncing, like an absence of general mail (and I even checked my mirror!), but now that you mention it, it has been a couple days since I received mail from a Yahoo mailing list. How odd.

So I clicked on the "fix the problem and then click here" link, received the message they sent, and entered the magic code to get reinstated. But I shouldn't have been suspended in the first place. And this is the second time this has happened to me (the first a year or so ago).

Yahoo seems to have this model that you do everything though their web site so of course you'll notice a problem like this right away. Um, actually, I do as little as possible through their web site; I find it annoying in many ways. And a mailing list should not require web access anyway.

They claimed they had received some bounces during the time when I was definitely receiving mail from them. If they'd, y'know, tried sending me mail saying "hey, sometimes you're bouncing", I would have looked into this sooner. (Yes, it's possible that such mail would bounce, but obviously some of their mail was getting through.) I run mailing lists; I do glance at bounce messages I receive.

I used to be indifferent to Yahoo. Can't say that any more. :-)

Meanwhile, if anyone reading this has received bounce messages when trying to email me, I'd sure like to know the details.

Comments

[geekosaur]

I get bounced-mail warnings/probes from several mailing lists I'm on periodically. Near as I can tell, what's happening is the lists are getting bounces due to spam pretending to be from my address, and aren't smart enough to check that the header is even remotely sane; they just trust the bounces.

[geekosaur]

Hm, more precisely, not claiming to be from me but hoping to bounce "back" to me and thereby sneak past my spam filters....

[cellio]

Gak. I had assumed -- perhaps incorrectly, it now appears -- that when they got a bounce message they at least checked to see that it was a message that freaking came from them in the first place!

[geekosaur]

Nope; some mailing list software is not so swift. One would think yahoo would get it right, but I figure they're well-named. :)

[spiritdancer]

Heh. Imagine my surprise when I went to their website for something totally unrelated and noticed they were showing my main address as "bouncing" and needing to be reactivated.

Note that the delivery of mail from the lists I'm on never stopped.

I have to wonder if something screwy has gone on over there in the last week or so ::sigh::.

_M_

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Yahoo (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Yahoo&x=0&y=0). The name says it all.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Prompted by this message, I went over to Yahoo groups to see if any of my addresses were bouncing. One was -- my yahoo.com address, which I never, never use or check.

Most amusing.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

As a moderator for several yahoogroups, I share your frustration. When yahoo is evil, it's really, really evil.

yahell

[(Anonymous)]

That's happened to me also. The worst yahell was when they suddenly shut down my e-mail account and wouldn't tell me why except that I'd violated their "procedures and policies." My entire address book was in there, calendar, plus all the websites I use that address to sign in for!

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Same thing happened to me. I dunno what was up. Fortunately, I don't seem to have missed anything substantive. Argh.

[sethg]

Yahoo especially annoys me because I know that all it takes to set up a mailing list (with archives available on the Web, even!) is a PC manufactured within the last ten years, a permanent connection to the Internet, any one of several free Unix-compatible operating systems, and any one of several free mailing-list management systems.

Re: yahell

[cellio]

They wouldn't tell you why? That's ridiculous. I hope you were able to get your data back eventually.

[cellio]

Remember, though, that Yahoo is going after the lowest common denominator. These days anyone can set up a mailing list, regardless of presence of technical aptitude or basic net clues, by going to Yahoo. So they probably don't mind if they annoy the higher-end users, because they weren't going after that demographic much anyway.

I run two mailing lists from my ISP (majordomo; they also now offer mailman). I administer them through a web interface, though I could do it by email as well. I don't have to do any of the work of maintaining majordomo itself, so this is trivially easy for me. Yet I've also set up three mailing lists at Yahoo because they included people who thought that a big name like Yahoo buys safety and reliability and stuff. Joke's on them! With Yahoo you get ads and anti-user policies; how safe and reliable is that?

[cellio]

And to think that they chose to name the company that. I wonder why.

[cellio]

I own a few Yahoo lists, and I've tried to move them to my own provider a few times. (Administration would be easier and no one else should care, right?) But noooo, the subscribers want the "security" of Yahoo. Or, sometimes, the "convenience" -- I guess because if you change email addresses you update one profile instead of a bunch of list subscriptions. Personally, that's part of what I pay pobox.com for; I can redirect it to wherever I want and none of my lists are affected. If you have a domain name, same deal. I don't know why people think the Yahoo profile is such a good deal.