Google Chat and Gmail have been interfaced together since the beginning. Yahoo mail and instant message is just now doing it. Yahoo mail sucks. I used it for a LONG time (like 3 years) and I can tell you from experience that Gmail is a far superior service. Yahoo web hosting and domain registration also leaves a lot to be desired. It is difficult to manage and navigate. I switched all my domains to GoDaddy this past year because of Yahoo's problems.
2 comments:
Would you leave a comment about this disasterous yahoo feature on:
http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2009/01/28/im-sms-in-yahoo-mail-classic/
This is the Announcement Board/Blog where the developers provide information. They do monitor and read the comments - so the more comments about the system - the better chance we can get them to remove this thing.
Very DANGEROUS NEW CHAT FEATURE allows anyone to see your online status whether they are on your Approved Friends list or not.!!
This new feature now lets ANYONE who has a Yahoo email account to monitor you while you are logged into the Chat Feature in your inbox. This is a huge and unfortunate change from the Stand Alone Separate Yahoo Messenger product. When using the stand alone product you had to approve people to be on your friends list before they could see if you were online or off. With the stand alone messenger you could also set individual preferences for each individual person on your friends list to control if they could see your online status or not.
The new Inbox Chat & Mobile Text feature in your inbox now allows anyone access anytime to see if you are online when you change your status to online.
We tested this scenario by setting up a BRAND NEW Yahoo email address and adding the email address of our present account into the new email accounts address/contacts list. It instantly showed the online status of the account that was logged in through the inbox feature. This is a very INTRUSIVE! The new email address had absolutely no connection to the existing yahoo email address just seconds before setting it up. The New email account was granted instant Friends status to our old address - simply by just adding the email address to the contact list.
So if there is anyone out there that has problems with anyone one that may be a Cyber-Stalker or worse a Physical Stalker - I would AVOID Yahoo altogether. All the Stalker has to do is setup a new Yahoo Email account and add your email address to their contacts list and then they can see you anytime that you login to Yahoo and activate the Chat Feature. If you use the new Inbox Chat Feature as your source to Chat you will always be in danger of exposing yourself to anyone with a Yahoo address by simply logging in.
If you use the Yahoo Mobile IM feature on your phone you are exposed showing you on your Mobile IM through this new feature as well.
If you constantly have to show yourself as invisible to all just to insure that you are not exposed to the prying eyes of those you do not want to know your status - What is the point of the messenger service? Its original intent was to be a way to socialize with people in real time in the cyber world. If you are always invisible in IM you are not really using the IM service as it was originally intended, that was the whole reason for the Friends List and having to approve those people you wanted to include in your circle of trust.
What a shame that Yahoo Messenger team did not think this problem through before implementing this feature site wide and as you can see from this blog post the comments are Mostly AGAINST this New Feature for a ton of different reasons. Why cant the Yahoo Messenger team get the hint that the users want to be allowed to get rid of this feature from their inbox if they so choose to do so, not just change the status to offline.
Just a warning to Yahoo users everywhere - be aware you are now possibly being monitored whenever you are online.
Yahoo give us our Classic Mail back and Keep us SAFE!!!!
Be Careful fellow Yahooers,
John
Soon to be a Gmailer
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