Use Emails With Care | TechTree.com

Use Emails With Care

Major glitches with Gmail and Yahoo! Mail can make things uncomfortable.

 

Emails are an indelible part of our personal and professional lives, and everyday millions of emails make their way to people's inboxes. However, this is something that you need to be aware of, especially f you use services offered by Google, and Yahoo! — more so if you have renounced your Yahoo! mail account.

As far as Google is concerned, a report on PCWorld suggests that inserting images within your Gmail messages can put a temporary ban on your account, for as long as 24 hours. The bug, which is also mentioned on the Gmail Known Issues page creates issues when you insert inline images to emails, and is said to have cropped up after the latest redesign added a new message-compose window. While Google acknowledges this issue, it hasn’t been able to resolve it yet. That is surely going to affect a lot of people who send tons of mails with logos or images in their email signatures.

Now when Yahoo! decided to kill email ids and reassign them, they probably didn’t realise that there might be some exchange meant for old owners that will reach un-intended recipients. And if this report on the Information Week is to be believed, then the implications are far more pressing than just confidential emails. One particular user not only kept receiving personal emails, but could also log into the previous owner's Pandora, and Facebook accounts. He adds: "I can gain access to their Pandora account, but I won't. I can gain access to their Facebook account, but I won't. I know their name, address and phone number. I know where their child goes to school, I know the last four digits of their social security number. I know they had an eye doctor's appointment last week and I was just invited to their friend's wedding. The identity theft potential here is kind of crazy."

Yahoo! on its part, reports BBC, has promised to actively look into the matter. A rep told the site that before the email ids were put up for reuse, the company tried to reach out to the original account owners in "multiple ways to notify them that they needed to log in to their account or it would be subject to recycling".

Yahoo! also claims that it did set up a cooling period of 30-60 where mails would bounce from the account. But to resolve the situation, the brand will soon set up a feature called "Not My Email". Using this, good Samaritans can report emails meant for someone else.


TAGS: Internet, Yahoo!, Google

 
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