The automatic email forwarding feature of Yahoo Mail is temporarily disabled. This can be seen as a move to stop its users’ transition to other providers after its recent data breach. Users won’t be able to receive their Yahoo emails on other accounts.
In September, Yahoo suffered its biggest data breach yet. It affected around 500 million accounts. For many users, this is seen as a signal to move away from the email provider to other companies. Unfortunately, Yahoo newest decision, be it intentional or not, is limiting their users’ capacity to change providers.
One of the easiest way to facilitate the change to a new email provider is by enabling the auto email forwarding feature on the account you want to move from. The emails you received on that account will also be displayed in the inbox of your new one. By disabling this feature of Yahoo Mail, the company seeks to prevent any massive loss of users.
In response to users criticizing Yahoo of intentionally blocking this feature, the company declined to comment. Instead, it pointed out the post on its support page which explains the specific status of the feature.
The post contains the following message:
This feature is under development. While we work to improve it, we’ve temporarily disabled the ability to turn on Mail Forwarding for new forwarding addresses. If you’ve already enabled Mail Forwarding in the past, your email will continue to forward to the address you previously configured.
The fact that Yahoo Mail only allows new forwarding addresses to be set up is an indication of the real intention of Yahoo for ‘working’ on the feature. Additionally, it is unclear why a basic and simple feature like email forwarding would be under development. It has been part of the standard service of every provider for a long time and none have had any issues with it.
Keeping their current user base, even if it’s temporary and somewhat forcefully, is very important for Yahoo. Currently, the company is in talks with Verizon, who wants to acquire it. A smaller user base alongside its recent data breach could lead to a drastically lower selling price.
According to an update from Yahoo provided by TechCrunch, the company is working to get the Yahoo Mail forwarding feature back up as soon as possible.
Are you an Yahoo Mail user?
Image source: Wikimedia