The U.S. Postal Service is honor-bound not to open your mail. Carriers know their job is to deliver correspondence, not interfere with its free transmission.
Yahoo, the broker of free electronic mail for a significant fraction of the global population, appears to be on the verge of violating this sacred implicit trust, if they haven't already.
When I attempted to log in to my Yahoo mail account earlier today, a splash screen popped up informing the user that Yahoo mail is now safer, better, stronger. Olympian aspirations aside, the bottom line was that Yahoo now is going to spy on my mail and optimize its advertising based on terms and names and words in my email. We're not talking about search terms typed into a search engine that might also produce targeted advertising as I search. We're talking about nothing less than Yahoo computers reading my mail. I was presented with two buttons: an inviting golden "I Accept" and a cold gray "No Thanks." Links to the allegedly new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy were dead. How could I even attest to something I haven't had the opportunity to read?
I clicked "No Thanks."
Nothing happened. And I was blocked from accessing my mailbox.
I tried again.
I called a number of Yahoo support numbers found online after trying unsuccessfully to log in but repeatedly facing the same screen providing me with a forced, false choice. No humans on any of the lines, no answers, no change.
I called the Associated Press to alert them of what seems to me to be a huge story. At the least, my experience, and probably that of thousands of others, represents a colossal tactical misstep for a huge company now under new leadership, but one welded deeply into our personal and professional lives as surely as email itself is.
A half hour later I was able to log into my account without the splash screen and see emails received prior to the point I had been bumped off, necessitating my initial attempt to log back in, but it's not clear whether I actually enjoy functional mail service as two test emails I sent out to myself did not reach me.
The episode underscores the degree to which our entire society is entangled with technology to the point where a seemingly minor tweak can have major repercussions, and it presages more battles for freedom to come.
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