The IT Nerd

Because of the change of the terms of service of the Yahoo/Oath e-mail platform that Rogers uses, I have been asked how can users move off that platform because of the privacy issues that have been uncovered. I can tell you that it does take some work, but it is possible for the average person to move off that platform by downloading e-mails and contacts.

Let’s start with the contacts as that’s easy:

• In Rogers Yahoo Mail, click the Contacts icon .
• Click Actions | select Export.
• Select a format to export (if you’re unsure, I recommend Yahoo CSV).
• Click Export now.

This will download your contacts to a file that you could use to import into an e-mail client like Microsoft Outlook or some e-mail service like Gmail. Next you want to delete your contacts by doing the following:

• Go to contacts and check the select all check box. Yahoo displays the number of contacts selected in the right side panel.
• “Delete Contacts”

Now to the hard part which is to download the e-mail. You’ll need an e-mail client to pull this off and I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird as that will download and save your emails in MBOX format. You then have to set it up to download all your email. General instructions on setting up Mozilla can be found here with options for setting things up manually and automatically. You may need the server settings for Rogers which are:

You will have to likely create an app password to make this work. Here’s how you do it.

1. Go to the Rogers Member Centre sign-in page.
2. Enter the Rogers Yahoo! email address and password for the account you’d like to create an app password for, then select Next.
3. Mobile: Select the menu icon ( ) in the top-left corner, then select Account Information.
   Desktop: Select Account Information in the top-right of your browser window.
4. Select Authorized Applications.
5. In the Name your password field, label your app password with the name of the email program it’s for, then select Generate. A pop-up containing a randomly generated app password will appear.
6. Write down the password or copy it to your clipboard.
7. Enter this password during your email set-up when prompted. When finished, select Done in the pop-up.

You can download all the mail once everything is set up. It snags everything in your inbox and outbox along with any other folders that you might have in your e-mail account. From there to export your mail, I would suggest that you use this Mozilla Thunderbird add on to make it easy to export your mails in MBOX format. That way you can import it into another e-mail program.

Once you export your e-mail, you can use Thunderbird to delete it all from the Yahoo/Oath servers. Because as I said here, you want to delete your e-mail and contacts to keep Yahoo/Oath from reading your e-mail.

Give this a shot and leave a comment to let me know how it goes.

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.

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that Yahoo/Oath have changed their terms of service for their e-mail offering, and as a result of that Rogers customers are up in arms because Rogers uses the Yahoo/Oath e-mail platform and people feel that their privacy might be under threat. Overnight, I got 7 or 8 e-mails from users asking me what options exist for users who want to switch from using Rogers e-mail service and still have their privacy.

In my mind, there’s really only one option that balances the need for privacy with ease of use and support for a variety of OSes and devices. That option is ProtonMail. Based in Switzerland, these guys are free (Though they do have a paid option. More on that in a moment) and use open source software to provide their services. They guarantee that nobody can see your e-mails. And they do mean nobody. Not your ISP. Not a national government. Not even them. In fact, if you forget your password, you lose your e-mail if you don’t have a recovery account set up. You don’t get more secure than that. Another plus is that these guys don’t store IP address info. Because when you send an e-mail, the external IP address of the network you sent it from is usually logged. That can allow someone to track you down in theory. That can’t happen with these guys.

The free version of ProtonMail supports 500 MB of email storage and limits your usage to 150 messages per day. You can pay for the Plus or Visionary service for more space, e-mail aliases, priority support, labels, custom filtering options, auto-reply, built-in VPN protection, and the ability to send more e-mails each day. There’s also a Business plan available. So you do have options depending on your e-mail needs. But I suspect that most Rogers users would be fine with the free option.

Are there any downsides to using ProtonMail? The only one that I can see is that it does not support IMAP, SMTP, or POP3 protocols. Likely to ensure your security. Thus you’re stuck using their web interface or their iOS or Android app. But they are all easy to use so I don’t think that’s too much of a hardship.

Thus if you’re a user of Rogers e-mail, and you’re not thrilled with the change to the terms of service from Yahoo/Oath because of the privacy implications related to that, you might want to check out ProtonMail as you get privacy and security for your e-mail with them.

Over the weekend a number of stories appeared about a change to the terms of service to Yahoo e-mail. Yahoo, which you can also call Oath as that’s the name given to it by Verizon who bought the company last year said in their new terms of services that they analyze “‘content and information,’ including e-mails, photos and attachments ‘when you use our services.’”

In other words, they read your e-mail.

Now how does Rogers fit into this? Rogers e-mail services are powered by Yahoo/Oath. Thus when users got notified about this change to their terms of service, it led to stories like this one and this one being published.

The thing is, I am not sure why anyone is surprised here. After all Google’s Gmail e-mail service used to read your e-mail to serve up targeted ads. Until they dialed that back  to read your e-mail for other reasons. So one could safely assume that others that offer up e-mail services were doing the same thing.

In short, if you use a third party e-mail service, anyone, or anything could be reading your email. Thus you should have no expectation of privacy. Ever. If you want privacy when it comes to you’re e-mail, you can always do what I do which is build and run your own e-mail server and host it out of a data center. That way you control the e-mail that you receive and that you send. What happens to it after you click send though is completely out of your control. Which means that you’re only marginally ahead in the privacy game.

One other thing. There’s a bunch of people who are mad at Rogers for this. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Rogers is just collateral damage in this as they are essentially a customer of Yahoo/Oath. So while there are things that Rogers does that deserve the ire of their customers, this isn’t one of them.

Finally the story written by Ellen Roseman of Toronto Star which is linked to above has this in it:

Rogers Yahoo email customers need to press for more information. What is the deadline for agreeing to Oath’s updated terms? Will they be cut off without access if they don’t agree? Can they get help moving all their emails to another provider?

Those are fair questions to ask. Hopefully Rogers and Yahoo/Oath answers those questions and does so quickly. Though I suspect that I can answer question three for them. I cannot see a scenario where Rogers or Yahoo/Oath would help a customer move their e-mail to another provider. There’s no value in doing so. But the other two Rogers and Yahoo/Oath can and should answer.

UPDATE: I just had a chat with a Rogers Tech Support rep who informed me that if users don’t agree to the new terms of service, they can’t use Rogers e-mail. Also, users who have contacted me directly have said the same thing.