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Carol Haynes:
I actually prefer the Yahoo and Live offerings to GMail (though I have and use all three!). I'm wondering, though, if Yahoo will ever make it out of beta. It's pretty solid, and will be my favourite of all the options if its idiosyncrasies (mailboxes failing to load, for example - not good) ever get ironed out. It would be nice, too, if they'd let me access my account from a POP3 client without having to pay $19.95 a year for the privilege.
-Darwin (June 14, 2007, 01:37 PM)
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Can't you access POP mail if you agree to some Yahoo Spam ?

I have two free Yahoo accounts and it worked fine for me - all the crap came in the same format so it was easy to setup a filter to put it straight in the bin.

Of course things may have changed as I now use an ISP Yahoo account in the UK (which is effectively a paid for account) and use the mail forwarder to send stuff from my old Yahoo accounts to my new address.

That could be another option - just set up forwarding to an ISP based address which you can pick up with POP. IIRC you have the option to leave the original mail on the Yahoo servers so you can then collect in both places but would need to manually delete old mail online.

A final possibility is to use a service like IzyMail (that one is paid but I am sure there are free ones out there too) that grab hotmail and yahoo mail and deliver it via a POP interface to your mail client. This works irrespective of whether you have a paid for hotmail or yahoo account.

You may want to look at this open source project http://ypopsemail.com/ (note I have never used this as I don't need it but it may be the solution you are looking for). Report back if it works please.

Carol Haynes:
But...  I have two Yahoo! accounts and access them both with POP3.  However, I'm using the old-style Yahoo.  I think I avoided the beta because I didn't have enough screen resolution for it at the time, and I've never bothered to try it again.  Besides, I think it uses ActiveX, and isn't that a security risk?
-rjbull (June 16, 2007, 03:49 PM)
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It works on Firefox as well as IE so presumably it uses JavaScript and not ActiveX which would exclusively require IE.

I have swapped back and forth between old and new Yahoo interfaces and keep going back to the old interface. The new one isn't ready yet - lots of options are missing. I also use colour coding with emails based on Address Guard addresses (which means SPAM stands out) - this isn't supported in the new version (bummer).

Lot's of the options either aren't available in the new version or you end up going back to the old options pages and then it often gets confused trying to get back to your mail box.

The other thing is it is just too slow at the moment.

Darwin:
Hmmm... interesting couple of posts Carol. I haven't tried to access Yahoo via pop3 "natively" in ages, maybe I'll give it a look again.

As for the new interface, I still have an active Yahoo Plus account so only use the new interface to access my mail away from my main computer and to review and remove the contents of the SPAM folder (always a good idea as occasionally I find bona fide e-mail - usually with licence code! in it). I've already decided not to renew the Yahoo Plus membership, which runs out next month, and hope that you're right (SpamBayes does an outstanding job of filtering my mail, so I don't care about SPAM from Yahoo).

rjbull:
[...]I'm using the old-style Yahoo.  I think I avoided the beta because I didn't have enough screen resolution for it at the time, and I've never bothered to try it again.  Besides, I think it uses ActiveX, and isn't that a security risk?
-rjbull (June 16, 2007, 03:49 PM)
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It works on Firefox as well as IE so presumably it uses JavaScript and not ActiveX which would exclusively require IE.
-Carol Haynes (June 19, 2007, 07:27 AM)
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[Edit]  I should have noted that I'm using Yahoo! UK addresses, not Yahoo.com  [/Edit]

I think something may have changed.  I have a hazy memory that when I first tried the beta, it said you needed ActiveX.  I just swapped back and forth again, and it doesn't say that now.  However, I noticed something else: "You now have unlimited storage," which sounds good.

I also use colour coding with emails based on Address Guard addresses (which means SPAM stands out)

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What's Address Guard, please?

Carol Haynes:
What's Address Guard, please?
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I too am in the UK and use BTInternet as my ISP. They have teamed up with Yahoo in the UK provide Yahoo! Mail 'Plus' email addresses (or at least they did when I signed up - things have changed since) disguised as btinternet.com addresses.

If you are using the full version of Yahoo (Yahoo Plus?) there is the facility to use Address Guard (click on options). It works by allowing you to set up as many yahoo.co.uk (or yahoo.com depending on location) email addresses as you like for specific purposes. They each have a common prefix (which you choose) and all email is delivered to a folder you specify for each address (when you set it up - or you can edit it later. It can be the Inbox). You can also enable a column to see which was the receiving address. You choose whether you allow filters or SpamGuard to be applied to each address individually - and you can also optionally send email from these address (they appear in a drop down list when you compose an email online).

This has the advantage that each time you sign up to a website you can give them a unique email address - and if you start receiving SPAM you know which site sold your details. It is then trivial to delete that specific email address and not receive more spam on it. Your normal email address needs never be seen by anyone - not that it stops spam because Yahoo seems to have real problems dealing with dictionary attacks.

You can see full details at: http://help.yahoo.com/us/tutorials/mail/mail/addressguard1.html

The only disadvantages I can see is that if you decide to drop Yahoo you need to change all your addresses again (but you would have to if you gave out your Yahoo address anyway) and the worry that Yahoo suddenly decide to do things a different way and expect you to change everything with short notice. I don't know how likeyly that would be as they would have a lot of very unhappy paying for customers.

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