Free, and worth what you pay for
I set up a Yahoo account, back around 2004, and in many ways, it was better than Google's and Microsoft's offerings at the time.
The email was okay (GMail didn't exist), the calendar and contact manager were pretty good, and they also incorporated a number of useful features, like an RSS reader, bookmark manager, yahoo group interface, and file briefcase into your account.
Unfortunately, they ignored it, and it was surpassed by competitors. Still, it did no real harm to the functionality. The interface was dated, and missed features that were in competitor's offerings, but it remained usable.
But then the security breaches hit. And hit. And hit. And Yahoo either ignored them, hid them, or outright lied about them.
By that point, I'd pretty much given up on it, and was already using other systems. Some mailing lists still used my Yahoo account, so I checked in every once in a while to keep up. That is, until one day, I couldn't.
For some reason, my password wasn't accepted. I'd logged in the previous day at home in a portable browser instance, but I couldn't log in anywhere else. There was no reason given, and I was told use the password reset facility to get a new password.
The password reset facility said it couldn't proceed for "an invalid reason", and that I should go to Yahoo help. Yahoo help told me to call the Yahoo hotline. The Yahoo hotline told me to try the password reset facility. It was a perfect loop.
Now, when I'd set up the account, I put secondary emails and phone number information, in case of an event like this. It didn't matter; Yahoo doesn't even look at that. I used the browser that was logged in already to send emails to support from within Yahoo, and they sent me to the support forums. I went to the forums, and the Yahoo reps there told me to just use the password reset facility, which is where the problem had started.
Fortunately, since I was logged in in that one instance, I was able to scrub the account clean. I deleted everything. Every email, contact, calendar entry, briefcase file, RSS feed, the works.
Three months later, I got an email in one of my secondary accounts from Yahoo support, who had just discovered a server issue that had affected "a small number of users" and had locked them out of their accounts. This had apparently happened 90 days ago, and they had fixed it, so I could start using the account again, no problem.
I checked, and yes, I could reset my password. I still have it, but it's been idle for a decade. When I was locked out of my account, I was completely hung out to dry by Yahoo. Despite setting up secondary emails and phone numbers, they were ignored. Yahoo reps were unreachable. Forum posts and help requests were utterly useless. If not for the fact that a tech stumbled across the problem on their side by accident, my account would still be locked out. So, why on earth would I want to rely on a service like that?
I now use a paid service (mailbox.org) that charges me 1 euro a month, and actually has a financial interest in not locking me out of my service, because if they do, they don't get paid. Sometimes free really is worth what you pay for it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
