The IT Nerd

I was asked by a reader if I could distill down the change in the terms of service that Rogers e-mail users are upset about. But to be clear, the change in the terms of service really come from Yahoo/Oath who provide e-mail services for Rogers. Thus Rogers is not responsible for this. However, this does apply to anyone who uses Yahoo/Oath e-mail. With that in mind, the goal of this article is to get to the key points of what this change means to Rogers users. In short, Yahoo/Oath has changed their terms of service to allow them the following rights:

• Yahoo/Oath now claims ownership your e-mail, its contents and any attachments.
• Yahoo/Oath can do whatever it wants with your e-mail. As in scan it for keywords that allow them to provide targeted advertising to you for example.
• Yahoo/Oath states that you have obtained permission of all of the people that you contact thru e-mail, and they have agreed to have their e-mail to you scanned as well.
• Yahoo/Oath also states that it can send email, on your behalf to your contacts. Presumably to sell them stuff.

Here’s the kicker. If you don’t like the above, and to be frank most people reading this wouldn’t, and you don’t agree to the terms of service, you don’t get to use the Yahoo/Oath e-mail platform. But…. If you don’t accept the terms of service by May 25th, you would have been deemed to have accepted them. So, what’s so significant about May 25? That’s when the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force. So this is clearly meant to tie into that. And even if you don’t agree to this change in the terms of service, you’re going to agree to this change to the terms of service.

Based on the above the only way I can see to avoid this is to somehow download your contacts and your e-mail and delete them from the Yahoo/Oath servers. Then either delete the account if it isn’t tied to anything else, or keep the account open so that it can’t be recycled by someone and used for illicit purposes. I’d be leaning towards the latter and set up a vacation notice to let people know where they can actually e-mail you. But if I did that, I would also stop that account from accepting e-mail.

I am currently working on an article to help you to help you to move off the Yahoo/Oath platform if that’s what you wish to do. The process isn’t exactly straightforward, but doable by most people. Expect that on Friday.

This entry was posted on April 25, 2018 at 9:45 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.