April 24th is the date Yahoo! terminated its free email forwarding and POP access service, restricting users to free webmail and fee-for-service POP access.  Even though Yahoo! sent out reminders once or twice weekly of the impending change a month ahead of time, I suspect many users either deleted the advisories or simply neglected to make the necessary changes in their list subscription arrangements.  Considering that some Yahoo! accounts are probably used for a multitude of subscriptions, especially in "forwarding" mode, cessation of that service would undoubtedly lead to a rapidly full mailbox with, I suspect in the circumstances, termination of account by Yahoo!

They have made the change due to rapidly declining advertising revenues, now requiring a greater portion from their user base, and if users aren't maintaining their accounts, I can see Yahoo! closing the accounts very quickly, leading to the mass bounces.

In March, Yahoo! advised users to use their ISP's SMTPs for sending @yahoo.com email.  I don't think Yahoo's system is validating account access permissions for ISP or any other SMTPs, which makes me worry about spoofing, etc.  (I removed my password in Eudora for a Yahoo account, causing it to prompt me for it when sending, and upon entering a fictitious password, the email was successfully sent.)

Michael


At 12:54 PM 4/24/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Friends are telling me that my Yahoo account is bouncing like this - not for listmail but regular mail.
>
>I think something is wrong at Yahoo today. My account is not full or otherwise impaired, and it is sending fine...
>
>From: Jane Lyle [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
>All our Yahoos are bouncing the same way. . . .
>>
>> I just received a mass bounce response from our recent list distribution
>> from Yahoo -- I've never seen this format before, esp. from Yahoo!
>>
>>    This account has been disabled or discontinued.