You didn’t think I would let Halloween pass without showing off some of our favorite costumed Liams did you?  My favorite is Rappin’ Liam, but since Dracula is a more famous character I thought I would give Count Liam the top position.

Hope all of you out there have a happy and safe Halloween!

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If he keeps this up I may just have to find a way to give Mark his own byline, but in case you missed the Yodel post, our resident anti-spam czar Mark (the same one who held the recent workshop) had a few words to share about the ever increasing “lottery” scams.  Check it out!

Coalition crackdown on lottery spammers

What generally increases when the overall economy declines? That’s right – crime. And these days, when you receive an email that proclaims that you’ve won the “Yahoo! Lottery,” the financially-pressured optimist in you might be more inclined to bite the bait.

Last May, we filed a lawsuit against “Yahoo! Lottery” spammers who use our brand to trick unsuspecting users into handing over personal data to claim a prize. And we’re making progress on catching these scammers, but we’re concerned that they may step up efforts to dupe people impacted by these tough times.

Today we announced a public-private coalition with Microsoft, the African Development Bank, and Western Union to allow victims of lottery scams to upload police reports we can use with the goal of tracking down these devious criminals and developing better ways of protecting people online. INTERPOL has gotten involved to inform international law enforcement agencies about the initiative and provide guidance on critical information to collect to identify trends and common patterns.

Here’s how it works. Yahoo! and the other coalition members have set up dedicated email addresses and Web sites (ours is http://antispam.yahoo.com/phishingtips) where lottery scam victims — those who took the bait and handed over personal information — can share details of the police report they have filed. These reports may be helpful to other coalition members and law enforcement in fighting lottery scammers.

For readers who spot a scam but don’t fall for it, we have tips for you, too. First off, don’t ever reply to the message, even as a joke. You don’t want to be encouraging these guys. Instead, click the “Spam” button, which helps us and our anti-spam systems block these types of messages and kick these criminals off the Internet. We also have a form you can use to report lottery scams and other kinds of abuse originating from Yahoo! users.

As we’ve said before, no one ever wins the Yahoo! Lottery. And that’s simply because there is no Yahoo! Lottery. We’re on a mission to protect you from these online predators, but in addition to what we’re doing on our end, you can also find some tips on how you can protect yourself on our anti-spam resource site.

Mark
Anti-Spam Czar, Yahoo! Mail

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That’s right, you heard me correctly! There’s a whole new calendar application for Yahoo! and you are welcome to try it out now. I know that a lot of you have been requesting this for a long time, so this news is definitely something to sit up and take notice of.

What can I expect with the new Calendar (beta)?
I’m going to skip some of boring (well, not for me) stuff like it’s built by incorporating much of the technology developed by our Zimbra team, adhering to open standards, using Web 2.0 technology, and interoperability with Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Mozilla, and Google.

The good stuff that I think you’ll appreciate are the things like:

• Drag and drop events
• Calendar sharing
• Personalisation like color coding and adding photos from Flickr
• To do list
• Setting reminders… plus a whole lot more

How do I get it?
Switching to the new calendar is easy. However, before I tell you how, there are just a couple of points you should be aware of:

• The all new calendar is still in its Beta stage which means there are still some things to be ironed out, and you may run across a few errors now and again
• And while switching over is easy, switching back is hard(ish). So, if you decide you don’t like the new calendar and want to switch back, all of your changes and additions will be lost. You’ll be taken to your old calendar from the day that you switched.

So, now that you’re in the know, here’s how to try it out. Just go to http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com and start using the all-new calendar (beta). If you’re not sure if it’s right for you, check out this video from the calendar team to give you a preview of what to expect.

Happy calendaring,
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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While we have a lot of confidence in the overall experience being offered by the All-New Calendar beta, the fact of the matter is that it is a beta and some people may want to switch back.  We had always intended to include that option (hence the Help pages that describe its presence on the Calendar Options page) but it had to be turned off at the last minute.

So for all of you users who have switched to the beta, and think you might prefer to switch back, or if you wanted to try the beta, but were afraid you couldn’t change your mind…I have some good and bad news for you.

The good news is that users can now find that Switch Back option, right where the Help pages say it should be.  But before you rush over and start playing with it you should also know the bad news (which is very clearly called out before completing your request).

Anything that you’ve added or changed while in the Beta will not follow you back.  Your calendar will be just as it was before you switched to the beta.  The same thing goes for any Notes.  It’s like it never happened.

Just be sure you are aware we flash a pretty aggressive looking warning message.  Don’t be alarmed.  We just want to make sure you are aware that the changes don’t follow you back.

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Over the next several weeks, the RSS Feeds Reader (integrated into the sidebar of the All-New Mail) will begin to ease off into the sunset.  Overall usage of the feature was very low, and we’ve made the choice to focus our development resources on features and functionality that are valuable to the most users.

All of your feeds are safe, and can all be found over at MyYahoo!  There you can continue to access all of your favorite feeds, along with a host of other useful tools and modules (personally I couldn’t live without my Fantasy Sports, EW.com, and Personal Assistant modules).

A very limited number of preview servers have already begun the transition, while other servers will start to see the change over the next few weeks.  Initially the Feeds link will remain in your sidebar, and will provide the following message:

We’ve learned that some users may have encountered errors while attempting to access their Feeds over the last day or so, but those are completely unrelated.  Nonetheless, we are working to get that issue resolved ASAP and make sure our Customer Care agents are clear on the timing of the actual change.

Again, we apologize to those of you who have enjoyed using the feature, and want you to know that decisions like these are not made without careful consideration.  It was a tough call, but one that makes sense for the overall Mail Community.

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Hi all,

Based on feedback on this blog, and much of what I’m hearing from other blogs, there is a bit of confusion regarding the new profiles experience.  Because of this I want to offer some important clarification about how it works.

There are a lot of people who think we are now automatically displaying your information to the world, which is totally and completely untrue.  This probably stems from the fact that what you see, when logged in to your profile, is completely different than what everyone else sees.

You can test this by copying the URL for your profile, logging out, and then pasting that URL back in.  Unless you have gone into your settings and changed them (to specifically lower your privacy settings), or “connected” with another user, your profile is pretty barren.  Once you have made a connection with another user, they will be able to view more detail on your profile, but since you don’t have to connect with others you can still keep your info private.

Some other users are concerned by the fact that they will no longer be able to maintain unique profile pages for each alias used on an account.[edited for clarification] It’s correct that aliases can’t have unique profile pages anymore, however many users think we are directing all of the aliases to your primary profile, which is false.  Users can choose to have their profile tied to those aliases, but it’s not the default.  We understand that this impacts people who have grown accustomed to maintaining multiple identities on the Yahoo! network with a single Yahoo! account.  We are not prohibiting users from maintaining multiple identities, but we are asking those that prefer to do so to open additional Yahoo! accounts.

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Final Update (27 October 2008): I have just spoken with Virgin/NTL. According to them, the issue affecting service in their ticket – F820104 – has been resolved. Everything should be back to normal again. At present, there are no other reported outages and all Yahoo services are working. If you are a Virgin/NTL customer and are having issues viewing Yahoo pages, please contact them and reference F820104.

————–
UPDATE (23 October 2008): Some Virgin Media customers are experiencing difficulty accessing Yahoo sites including Yahoo Mail. If your ISP is Virgin Media or NTL and you are having difficulty accessing Yahoo, you can give them a call and give them F820104 as a reference number.

The issue described below has been fixed and everything is working normally now.

Thanks,
Andrew – Yahoo Mail Team
———
Original Post (29/08/2008):
Some of you may have experienced difficulties logging into Yahoo! Mail this morning. The problem occurred this from about 8.00 in the morning. Our crack network engineering team was on the case immediately and was able to fix the problem by 10.00. We had some difficulties with some of our equipment which were fixed as quickly as possible. Any PC user who ever has had to reboot their computer should know what that’s like – of course you Mac users out there probably never feel our pain ;-)

All systems are back to normal now and you should no longer have any issues logging into and using mail. We apologize if you were one of the few effected by the Yahoo! Mail outage.

Happy emailing,
Andrew – Yahoo Mail Team

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You might notice over the next couple of days that in your folder list, on the left-hand column of the All-new Yahoo Mail, the item called “All feeds” has been removed. If you use the classic version of mail, or have no idea what that was for anyway ;-), then you can stop reading. However, some of you might be wondering where in the world your feeds have gone. If that’s the case, then read on…

We haven’t removed the feeds completely. We’ve just changed their location. All you have to do to find your feeds is check over at My Yahoo! (http://uk.my.yahoo.com) and you’ll find them all there (usually towards the bottom of your My Yahoo page).

Personally, I really like My Yahoo. In fact, I recently changed it to my home page. You can drag “modules” to different locations, so that the things that are important to you are right where you want them. I have moved my “Mail Preview” module and the BBC news feed to the top of my page, and now I get a great preview of my most recent messages and news. With the Mail module, I love that when you hover your mouse over one of your messages, you get a quick preview of the message.

If you haven’t taken a look at My Yahoo – http://uk.my.yahoo.com – recently, now’s a great time. If you use My Yahoo regularly, like my brother Dave, you know how good it is already.

Happy emailing,
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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There’s some big news that has a “connection” to your Mail experience.  If you checked your profile over the weekend, you may have noticed things look a little different. Last Thursday we rolled out an all-new profile for Yahoo! users, geared towards a more “open and social” Yahoo!.

The update includes a sneak peek of what your Address Book/Contacts experience will be like down the road, which is something Mail users should be interested especially in.  There’s also an important change for users who have created an alias for their account, so if that’s you make sure you read on.

To get started, you’ll need to go to: http://profiles.yahoo.com/ to begin setting up your new profile. When you log in, it should automatically pull in your old profile data, and will give you the opportunity to update your information.

The new profile provides users with a single identity while they’re on the Yahoo! network, consolidating your aliases into one account with your main profile. This doesn’t, however, mean that you can’t still have an “alias” while you’re on the Yahoo! network – you can still use multiple identities on Groups, Chat, or Finance. However, these aliases CANNOT have their own profile page, nor can they have any unique profile data associated with them.

To learn more about editing and managing your new profile on Yahoo!, be sure to visit the profiles news blog for more information, as well as tips on how to manage your aliases and profiles within the network.

Additionally, if you want more information on how to use your profile, start with the new profiles tutorial, located here: http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/prof/index.html

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Once again we’d like to thank everyone who submitted questions, and who stopped by to participate, during last week’s Mail Basics Workshop (transcript here). If you missed it, I was joined by Chris (Product Manager for All-New Mail), Carl (Customer Experience, referenced here), Maryn (liaison between the Mail team and Mail Customer Care), Melissa (Messenger twitterer and blogger), and some others who popped in and out during the hour … and we all chipped in to answer user questions.

We received a lot of great questions, and the staffers really enjoyed the opportunity to hear directly from the users. Below is a sample of one of the questions, but there were a lot more:

peteyboyyyy: First off, I LOVE Yahoo! But I always see these weird flag things in my inbox. What do the backwards arrow, forward arrow, and flag icons mean?
YMailTeam: They’re there to show you what messages you’ve replied to (backwards arrow), what messages you’ve forwarded (forward arrow), and what messages you’ve flagged for follow-up.
YMailTeam: To flag a message, click the message you’d like to flag. Find the “More actions” button above the main Yahoo! mail window. Click it and select “flag for follow-up.” It’s as easy as that!

And now that we have completed our second workshop, I’m creating a Workshops page.  There you will be able to easily access transcripts from all previous Workshops, but also see if any other Workshops are scheduled in the near future.

Check out the transcript for the Mail Basics Workshop here, and keep an eye on the Workshops page for other transcripts and news.

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