Ever Tried Getting Rid of Your Yahoo Email Account?

Because now they won't let you.

October 11, 2016 9:00 am

Bad days for Yahoo means worse days for you.

After witnessing the Internet service admit to both an email hack and government surveillance in recent weeks, you might be thinking, “It’s time to get rid of my Yahoo email account. Wait, I still have a Yahoo email account?”

You do, and you probably will for a long time. According to the Associated Press, automatic email fowarding has been disabled on the service. If you’ve already been using said service, you’re fine. But anyone new who wants to forward messages automatically to a non-Yahoo account will receive a message that notes “this feature is under development” and “temporarily disabled.”

Oh, and bonus: some users can’t even delete their accounts.

As someone who used their email forwarding several years ago when we got annoyed by Yahoo’s previously strict memory limits, we find this “under development” status extremely disingenuous. Email forwards are “a basic concept for 15 years for just about every email provider out there,” says Brian McIntosh, a small technology business owner.

All of this comes at a time when Verizon has expressed interest in buying the beleaguered Internet company — though now it may get a bargain.

Careful what you pay for.

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