Complaints against Yahoo
Yahoo Eliminates Education Groups
I have been a member of several Yahoo groups since 2000.
Recently Yahoo has been shutting down groups and eliminating moderators emails of many education groups that offer free information to students and teachers. They have eliminated groups with over six years of history and 5,000 members.
Student interns of one these groups created a poster offering a free information guide and posted it to seven yahoo groups. This student created poster offers a free information guide created by students, for students and available through the free student yahoo group club.
The Yahoo student club newsletter was closed down, the News Newsletter was closed down, the job information newsletter was closed down, the student internship letter was closed down, the free English lessons newsletter was closed down, the Education consultant's newsletter and other moderators of other education groups that posted the notice have also suffered the same fate of being eliminated.
Apparently yahoo does not want anything that resembles an ad that competes for attention to the Yahoo bombardment of ads on the long suffering yahoo groups users. When one views the current Yahoo TOS there is no violation as all aspects of the the activity is non-commercial. Yahoo has actually violated their own TOS and years of Yahoo promises advertised daily.
Despite six customer feed back emails and several phone messages on their customer service system Yahoo has refused to send comments or inquiries prior to email or group elimination - send comments or responses after the eliminations. It is obvious that if you are a Yahoo moderator of an education group that offers anything free from one related Yahoo group to another Yahoo group then you will be eliminated - even if you fully comply with the current published Yahoo TOS.
The Yahoo group moderators emails were also eliminated. So if you are a group moderator and have years of teaching materials, free books, lists and resources posted to your groups or in your email accounts - all of your personal property can all be eliminated without so much as a warning and no response from Yahoo. This is tremendously damaging and especially difficult when you use your Yahoo email as identification to receive emails or logins for external internet websites, memberships or other community groups.
Yahoo has spent years marketing their safe - store it in your Yahoo email and group services. Yahoo acts as fiduciaries of your personal communication and stored information. Millions of well meaning individuals are lured into a false sense of security.
I would like to see US based lawyers form a class action lawsuit and sue Yahoo into compliance with basic landlord responsibilities. US landlords cannot take tenants property or dispose of it without offering it back to the tenants. Yahoo is an internet landlord and should have to comply with US law. The information in my email accounts and groups is mine and my members property and Yahoo is denying us access to our personal property.
When you actually look at the Yahoo groups it is very obvious that huge hypocrisy exists within the management of the Yahoo groups. Several Yahoo groups offer no content - they simply have links to Geocities pages that contain only Google ads. When you read the Google, Yahoo, Geocities TOS they are clear violations of Yahoo, Google and Geocities TOS. Yet these sites continue to exist and thrive within the yahoo groups. Does yahoo really need the pennies they earn from these casino, porn and work at home scam advertisers?
This is an appeal to yahoo management. Use common sense. Is Yahoo afraid of free student created work that helps other students. Keep the education groups that actually help group members alive and eliminate the real criminals.
If you actually want a list of shut down sites and current Google, Geocities Yahoo violators - I will send them to you.
email to peterscottcanadian (at) yahoo (dot) com
Updates
The email address for Peter Scott has been disabled by Yahoo. Even though the Email has never violated any Yahoo TOS - it has been disabled for daring to post a complaint against yahoo and to ask some embarrasing questions in yahoo answers. Even in its simplest form - this is the elimination of freedom of speech.
Feb 23, 2007 - Yahoo has refused to answer any emails to customer care or customer service since Feb 23, 2007 - that is 16 days and counting.
And today, March 8th, the Regular Violators of Yahoo and Geocities TOS still have their Yahoo groups up and running without content and stuffed with Google ads.
Now well into September 2007 there has been no responses from Yahoo. The only actions that occurred are when Google was given the URLs of the Yahoo groups and Geocities pages that violated the Google TOS. Magically these pages were cancelled within 24 hours.
I have had at least three separate emails from supposed insiders that all suggested the Yahoo Geocities TOS violators are all Yahoo employees and these yahoo employees eliminate the tattle tales that attempt to expose their scummy little rackets.
