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If you subscribe to MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL for your email provider, then you should be aware of recent and not so recent developments with these companies, and why, as a progressive activist you should move to gmail or some other provider as soon as humanly possible. Not a very appealing idea is it? Read on.
A few years ago, Yahoo and AOL both implemented a high-speed toll lane for delivery of their emails. Business senders can pay a fee per email to ensure their communications are delivered quickly. For those of us like PDA, who get classified as business because of the size of our lists, this fee is too costly, so we get relegated to the slow lanes in the delivery of emails, which appears to open doors for other monkey business by these companies.
Yahoo and AOL are also “grey listing” incoming emails and filtering them. This means that they are rejecting senders' emails the first time around, and then running them through a filter for content, and sending again. Yahoo filters for content as well. Some emails may get through the server, but others will be permanently rejected without notice to the sender. These service providers supposedly make the determination based on the senders' compliance with standard mail practices--except emails still get rejected that comply with the standard practice. Our difficulty delivering to MSN/Hotmail addresses makes us believe that they may also be involved in some similar activity.
This has caused a headache of immense proportions for PDA. With approximately 20,000 Yahoo, AOL, and MSN/Hotmail addresses on our list, and despite having a compliant server, we fear a substantial number of our recipients never actually get an email from us even though we've sent it. We can time emails to go out in batches, which may improve the odds that our messages will be delivered, but the problem with this is, if done as recommended, it takes 48-60 hours to complete one blast to our entire base and no other emails can be sent during that time.
Some businesses and organizations have created a “special relationship” with these email providers by hiring full-time employees to constantly comb the list to ensure it is “clean” of duplicates and bad email addresses. While our new database performs these functions electronically, human beings can catch non-conforming addresses that the program cannot. PDA does not have the resources to hire people to perform this task, and we cannot guarantee the delivery of our emails in a timely way, or at all, to MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL addresses, although we will continue to try to resolve this problem.
Filtering for content is becoming more common. Truthout.org is currently battling with MSN/Hotmail and AOL, because these ”service providers” are classifying their emails as “junk” or “bulk” based entirely on content. Apparently, more conservative mailings are not subject to the filter. Clients of these providers have tried various ways to set their boxes to allow the Truthout emails through to their inboxes, but to no avail.
Yahoo and Hotmail will both insert links to other sites into the text of your email. Upon testing, we discovered that a PDA email sent through Yahoo was received with a link attached that took the reader to a conservative website. An email was received by PDA from one of our state coordinators through Hotmail with a link at the very top to download emoticons. We have learned Hotmail will also add links on our outgoing mail to hotmail address holders. And Yahoo is infamous for the advertisements it places in emails and for the increased spam many people endure as a result of using the Yahoo free email service.
In addition, both Yahoo and AOL are very difficult to contact, you can't just send them an email if you have a question or a problem and expect a timely response-if you get a response at all.
Let's not forget Yahoo's complicity with the Chinese government in turning over their records to the Chinese police, which resulted in many Chinese activists being jailed because of the content of their emails. Because of the Patriot Act, the safeguards that once protected Americans' privacy have vanished. It is clear that Yahoo will not stand up to government intrusion when it comes to privacy, so there's little reason to believe that Yahoo will not (or hasn't already) turned over records of your correspondence.
Clearly, we need to vigorously support net neutrality legislation and vigorously oppose legislation to grant immunity to telecom companies. In the meantime, you might think twice before using, or continuing to use, these services.
This article provides a comparison of service providers, and gmail compares well. especially among free service providers. When you take into account the aforementioned considerations, gmail is the hands-down winner among the big service providers. There are other paid providers like Mayfirst.org, which are progressively oriented and well worth your consideration. While we recognize the enormity of this task for many of you, but if you are a user of MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL and prize your right to privacy and free speech, PDA highly recommends that you consider transferring your email account to gmail, or to another provider, or at the very least--create a gmail account with which you can receive our emails.
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