Kristin Burnham reports:
Yahoo announced late Tuesday night that the company plans to roll out a tool for recipients of recycled email accounts to return messages that were not intended for them. InformationWeek reported Tuesday on three Yahoo users who began receiving emails containing personal information intended for the former user — including bank and wireless account information — after signing up for a recycled Yahoo account.
The new button, called “Not My Email,” will roll out this week and will be found under the “Actions” tab in users’ inboxes. The button will help users of recycled accounts train their inboxes to recognize which email is intended for them and which is not, eventually rejecting email before the user has read it.
Yahoo said it also plans to offer help to users who have lost their Yahoo account due to inactivity. These steps include the option to reclaim your old account; outreach to users by phone and email; and extending the grace period for inactive accounts. Yahoo did not say when the option to reclaim an inactive account would be available.
Read more on InformationWeek.
It’s nice that honest netizens can report “not my mail,” but thanks to Yahoo!’s ridiculous recycling plan, there’s nothing that stops people from reading e-mail that was not intended for their eyes – as an earlier report by InformationWeek showed. They are considering a “Require-Recipient-Valid-Since” protocol, but the sooner they fix this security and privacy mess that they’ve created, the better.
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