We’ve learned that some users may be intermittently encountering errors, or delays, when attempting to attach or download files within Yahoo! Mail.

Our engineers are reviewing the situation, but in the meantime I wanted to confirm with you that we are aware and are on the case.  You should also know that in many cases users have been successful (attaching or downloading) after repeating the initial attempt.

We apologize for any inconvenience this is causing.

***UPDATE – 11/14/08***
Some adjustments have been made, and it appears that the issues should be just about completely resolved.   The engineers made some additional tweaks that are expected to further aid the situation.  We’ll be monitoring closely over the weekend and I should have more detail on Monday.

***UPDATE – 11/20/08***
I’ve confirmed that many users have had their issues completely resolved, but it appears that some of you are still encountering delays.  I am following up with the engineering team to get additional information.

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Just a quick bit of news before the weekend.  While I may write this blog with our US audience in mind, I know that some of you out there are reading my words from places far beyond my local shores.  That is why I wanted to make absolutely sure that any of you reading from the UK are aware of the maintenance scheduled for this weekend.

Starting on Friday evening (November 7th) and continuing throughout the night, we are going to be undertaking extensive but essential work to our mail servers which means that some of you may not be able to access your archived mail folders or your mail overnight.

Please be sure to head over to our sibling blog for more information, and for status updates. And for the others reading … you can rest assured that I will do my best to get back to caring just about America as soon as I can.

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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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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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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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That’s right! Just a quick reminder to submit questions and come by the Yahoo! Mail Workshop tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be joined by members of the Y!Mail team to answer questions you have about using Yahoo! Mail (either version).

Submit advance questions, or visit the live event, by clicking here.

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For the next edition of our Yahoo! Mail Workshop series, we are going to be focusing on understanding the basics of  Yahoo! Mail.  Join us on Wednesday, October 8th, from 3-4PM PT, for the live, moderated chat with members of the Yahoo! Mail team.  Whether you are using Classic, or the All-New Yahoo! Mail, we want your questions.  It could be something as simple as setting your chat status in the New Mail.  Or maybe where to go to update your signature.  You ask and we will do our best to answer.

You will be able to submit questions in advance by visiting our Workshop page, as well as live during the event.  So get those questions in and be sure to be there!

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In July we held our first Yahoo! Mail Workshop.  It featured a live Q&A with Yahoo! Spam Czar, Mark Risher, and the response we got from everyone was very positive.  If you don’t recall the details, Workshops are live, online, moderated chats led by Yahoo! staff, with a focus on a specific topic of conversation at a specific, scheduled time. It is our hope that these Workshops can be a great opportunity for users to get tips on a variety of Mail related topics, as well as gets answers to specific questions that you have.

After each event I’ll post a complete transcript of the event, so that those who couldn’t attend live can still get the scoop.

I’m currently putting together the next Workshop, and wanted to get a taste of what you guys would like to talk about.  Keep in mind that these workshops are for educational and informational purposes, not to obtain account support.  That being said, let me know what topics you want to ask about.

UPDATE: It seems from several of the comments that the intention of the Workshop has been misunderstood (or I did a lousy job explaining).  What we are looking for are topics that you have educational questions about.  How to do something…how to use something…how to _____ (fill in blank).  What this isn’t supposed to be is a sort of Town Hall where we get together and discuss the direction of the product(s).

I understand that many of you would like to know what features may be coming down the pipeline, or what changes are on the horizon, but as a public company we can’t go into a lot of detail until the appropriate time.

So all that being said, what types of things do you think you would like to talk about?

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We want to make sure we give users info about steps they can take to enhance the security of their account.  So our VP of Mail, John Kremer, has put together a message (courtesy of the Yodel blog) that highlights many of the things people can do to protect themselves online.

—————————

Mail security tips

There are nearly 275 million Yahoo! Mail account holders worldwide.

Since one Yahoo! Mail address is in the news today, I thought this might be a good time to remind everyone about some online safety tips that will help protect your account. (In order to protect the privacy of our users, we can’t get into specific details of any of our users’ accounts — we know you’d want us to do the same for you!).

• Choose a strong password. It’s like a toothbrush – choose a good one and don’t share it. Your Yahoo! Mail password can be any length and can contain spaces, symbols, or numbers –- letting you come up with something that’s easy for you to remember but impossible for someone else to figure out.
• Avoid using a complete word from a dictionary (English or otherwise) or a name.
• Use at least 7 characters. The more the better. A long but simple password can be safer than a shorter complex one.
• Use a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and standard symbols (! @ # $ % ^ &, etc.).
• Don’t use personal information that someone could easily figure out. Avoid a password based on information easily obtained about your (a birthday, your child’s name, your phone number, school name, etc.). Don’t use a password you already use for another account, like your bank account PIN. And don’t’ use your Yahoo! ID (or other username) in any form (reversed, capitalized, doubled, etc.).
• Avoid the obvious. Attackers tend to first try repeating letters or number sequences (123456). Stay away from “test” or “password.” And when you change your password, which you should do relatively often, don’t just add a number to the end.
• Create a sign-in seal. Yahoo! and many financial institutions let you personalize your sign-in page to help you make absolutely sure you’re not falling victim to a phishing scam. See a photo of your cat Rupert? You know it’s safe to proceed.

Cybercrime is an industry-wide issue and we’ve been working with the industry in combating it (with innovations like Domain Keys). Rest assured that we take security and privacy very seriously here.

You are the first line of defense. Head over to antispam.yahoo.com and security.yahoo.com for more tips to help you protect your account, your privacy, and your identity.

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

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I was chatting with a buddy from Customer Experience the other day (everybody say hi to Carl. He is not only tasked with finding ways to make your Customer Care experience more pleasant, but he also reads this blog from time to time), and I learned about some of the common questions agents are getting.

Now it’s not all that noteworthy that there are common questions, but what people may not know is that when we identify these common questions we try to update the Help Center.  This means if you didn’t find the answer to a question before, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be there in the future.  It’s kind of organic that way.

Anyway, one of the more recent additions to the Tutorials area just so happens to address not one, but TWO of the common questions he was telling me about.  This tutorial offers a thorough run through of the different ways you can customize the All-New Yahoo! Mail.

Included in the Customizing Yahoo! Mail tutorial are step by step instructions for changing the content on your Home tab, changing the color of the interface, and more.  But the one that caught my eye was changing your personal information.  It turns out that two very common questions are about changing your password and changing your password and changing your name.  It also turns out that we have a great tutorial with step by step instructions.

Just below your Yahoo! ID, and above your Home tab, are links for Sign Out, My Account, and Mail Classic (for switching back to Classic).

Clicking My Account takes you to the Yahoo! Account information page, which covers your info across all of the Yahoo! Network.  Keep in mind that the password update, accessed by the Change Password link near the top of the page, is a system wide change, meaning you will now be using that password for all things Yahoo!

Another common question people have involves changing your name.  Whether it’s because of marriage, because of divorce, because you resent your parents, or just messed up during registration, people keep wanting to update that name.

Well you can also update your name from the same page, but we’ve found that in some cases people just want to update their name within Mail.  Maybe you want your full name on your Yahoo! account, but want a nickname or short name within Mail.  Well on the same page you’ll find a tutorial with steps to update your Mail name on an account by account basis.

There you have it.  Changing account information is easy if you know where to look for the directions.

BTW … our Tutorials team is always looking to make them better, so after checking them out please be sure to answer the “Was this helpful?” and provide any feedback you can!

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