Yahoogroups and Privacy - Where will the e-mail list hosts go?



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This may be the end of Yahoogroups momentum with the new opt-out
marketing profiles:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,51461,00.html

However, it looks like you need a YahooID to be fully impacted by
this.  The vast majority of the people on the dozens of Yahoogroups
lists that I run have not connected there list e-mail addresses with
a YahooID.  To change your YahooID settings see:
http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile

If Yahoo! finds "opt-out" profitable and maintains their current
course, I would guess that that the thousands of civic groups and
political efforts that use Yahoogroups for many-to-many interaction
will start to move elsewhere - the sense that your subscribers may be
marketed to because they subscribe to your lists makes using
Yahoogroups too politically risky.  Minnesota E-Democracy is now
accelerating our plans to move our remaining lists off of their
service.

The competition:
http://www.topica.com
http://www.groupcare.com - New company in Denmark.
http://www.communityzero.com
http://communities.msn.com
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Mailing_Lists/Hosting_Companies/

Or as Minnesota E-Democracy has, groups will start to support their
own lists:
http://www.list.org - We are using Mailman
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Servers/Mail/List_Manageme
nt/

- Say, anyone want to build some database-based e-mail list archiving
tools for E-Democracy? E-mail <do-code-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>
(OK, my DO lists are staying on Yahoogroups for know since I don't
have the resources to take them to my own domain.)


One tidbit, when I visited Vicnet in Melbourne, we chatted about
their MC2 - My Connected Community software
<http://mc2.vicnet.net.au>.  They built this themselves.  They told
me they were considering using Listar <http://www.ecartis.org> to add
e-mail posting (not just digest receiving) and may allow others to
use the software.  If they implement their system in such a way that
it allows people to participate on an _equal_ basis via e-mail and/or
web, add some sort of structured forum description system
<http://www.opengroups.org>?? that would connect distributed MC2
servers, and encouraged other sites to use and contribute to
improvements to their software, we may see the dawn of a new era of
online group communication. Then again, it might just be another
situation where most of us have no clue how to install or manage
software designed for the technically adept.

Steven Clift
Democracies Online

From:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,51461,00.html

Yahoo's 'Opt-Out' Angers Users
By Michelle Delio


Print this  •  E-mail it •  Set E-mail Alerts


2:00 a.m. April 2, 2002 PST
Internet portal Yahoo may want to think about changing its
advertising slogan from "Do You Yahoo?" to "You DO Yahoo."

In e-mail messages that began going out last week, Yahoo advised its
users that their account preferences had been changed, by Yahoo, to
indicate that they wanted to receive advertising solicitations
through spam, snail mail and telephone.

Yahoo has also added users' home addresses and phone numbers to their
"Yahoo ID" profiles.

Predictably to everyone but perhaps Yahoo, user reaction to that e-
mail has been less than positive.

Marketing and privacy experts predict that Yahoo's action will have a
widespread and detrimental effect on all electronic sales and
services, due to increasing privacy concerns.

- clip -

Information about the changes to Yahoo users' preference settings is
tucked in an e-mail from
Yahoo that begins with the statement: "Your privacy is very important
to us."

The "new" preferences will not go into effect for 60 days, giving
users a chance to reset their preferences to "No," before they begin
getting marketing solicitations, a Yahoo spokesman said.

Yahoo IDs are required for use of some of Yahoo's services. To sign
up for an ID, users only need to provide a user name, password and e-
mail address.


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