Yahoo tries to breathe life into dead pool of e-mail accounts


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SAN FRANCISCO ? Yahoo is trying to breathe new life into inactive email accounts by giving away the identifications beginning next month.

The program announced Wednesday will give Web surfers an opportunity to claim a new handle that had previously been unavailable. It also represents a last chance for Yahoo users who haven't logged in for at least a year to keep the address.

Yahoo plans to release the inactive accounts unless the current owner logs in again before July 15. After that, the identifications will be available to all comers and will be ready to use again in mid-August.

The Sunnyvale, California, company isn't specifying how many emails are in the dead pool. A Yahoo spokeswoman predicted a substantial number of IDs will be freed up.

The attempted revival of the dormant accounts coincides with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's nearly yearlong effort to create a bigger buzz around an Internet pioneer that had fallen out of fashion. Yahoo's headaches included the declining usage of its email service as more people embraced Google's alternative, Gmail.

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Wait, does this mean that if I know someone who has an inactive yahoo email but I also know that it's tied in to a few social networking accounts, I can wait till August, re-create their email, then do "forgot password" on all associated websites and gain control of their identity? Cool.

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The way they've done this is pretty stupid, Like they don't tell you what the account e-mail is or even the Yahoo id associated.

So you get an e-mail saying they're gonna remove your account unless you sign in, with an account they don't say.

typical yahoo, stupidity at its best.

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