Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail is a popular email service created by Yahoo. It was launched on October 8, 1997, and has become one of the largest email services in the world, with over 225 million users. People can access Yahoo Mail using a web browser, a mobile app, or special programs called email clients.

The service is free to use for personal messages. For a small monthly fee, users can get extra features. Yahoo Mail is also available in many languages besides English, making it easy for people all over the world to use.

History

In 1997, Yahoo bought a company called Four11, which had a webmail service named RocketMail. Yahoo Mail started using RocketMail's technology around the same time. Yahoo decided to buy RocketMail instead of building its own service because another popular email service, Hotmail, was growing very fast.

Over the years, Yahoo Mail changed and added new features. In 2004, Google launched Gmail, which offered more storage space than other email services. Yahoo responded by increasing its storage options too. In 2011, Yahoo Mail got a new look and added features to work better with Facebook. There were more changes in later years, including updates to make the service work well on mobile devices and new tools to help manage emails. In 2025, Yahoo Mail started using artificial intelligence to help summarize emails and suggest actions.

User interface

Yahoo Mail offered up to three different web interfaces for users to choose from. The original "Yahoo! Mail Classic" stayed available until July 2013 in North America. In 2005, a new version was added with features like drag-and-drop, better search, and keyboard shortcuts. Later, in May 2011, an updated beta version became the default, and the current webmail interface was introduced in 2017.

Spam policy

Yahoo! Mail is sometimes used by people who send unwanted messages to create special email addresses to check if others will reply. Yahoo! does not allow this and will close accounts involved in such activities, meaning those people lose access to all Yahoo! services linked to their account. Yahoo! also points out that because its servers are located in California, using them for unwanted messages could break local laws.

In February 2006, Yahoo! and another company called AOL decided to let some groups pay a very small amount for each message they sent. This payment would let their messages skip past Yahoo!'s checks for unwanted messages. However, not many groups used this option, and the company handling the payments stopped operating in 2011.

Filters

To help stop unwanted messages, Yahoo! Mail started changing certain words in 2002. Words that might let someone do harmful things were turned into different words. For example, "mocha" became "espresso" and "expression" became "statement." This sometimes led to mistakes, like changing "prevent" to "prevalent." Yahoo! later stopped this method and instead added an underscore in front of some suspicious words.

Greylisting

See also: Greylisting (email)

Messages sent to Yahoo! Mail addresses might be held for a short time as part of Yahoo!'s checks for unwanted messages. This delay usually lasts only a few hours, but sometimes longer, and neither the sender nor receiver is usually told about it. Yahoo! does not explain this process in detail, but some information is available.

Controversies

Yahoo Mail has faced several challenges over the years. In 2004, Yahoo’s Hong Kong office shared information with Chinese authorities about a journalist’s account, leading to criticism. In 2012 and 2013, security issues allowed hackers to access user accounts, affecting millions of people.

Yahoo has also faced issues with account management, such as deleting inactive accounts and dealing with phishing attacks. Additionally, Yahoo has been reported to scan emails to share certain information with the US National Security Agency.

Email addresses

When you create a new Yahoo! Mail account, the email address ends with yahoo.com or myyahoo.com. In the past, people could choose from other endings like ymail.com or [rocketmail.com](/wiki/RocketMail). There were also special endings for different countries, such as yahoo.co.uk for the United Kingdom, yahoo.fr for France, and yahoo.it for Italy. These older country endings are still kept for people who already have accounts, but new accounts can no longer use them.

Yahoo! Japan has its own service with endings like yahoo.co.jp and ymail.ne.jp. Some internet service providers that use Yahoo! Mail also give their own endings to their customers. For example, AT&T offers free accounts to people who are not their customers.

Previously, Yahoo also offered business email through Yahoo! Small Business, but this service moved to Verizon Small Business Essentials in early 2022.