Yahoo mail + Firefox weirdness

[mubs]

Anybody notice anything strange? For the last week or so, many emails in my Yahoo account (and my wife's) are blank. ie., the body is blank, attachments don't show; only the headers and nothing else. Copying and pasting the entire email into Notepad or Word will show the message. Or replying to the email shows the message in the reply window. If the sender sent an attachment without any text in the body of the email, one will not even know there is an attachment, having to deduce that from the size of the email.

This is in Firefox 2.0.0.1. Never had this problem before, and nothing has changed in the last 6 weeks on my system. I just tried accessing the problem emails with IE 6.x, and everything works fine. A couple of years ago, Yahoo didn't support FF well, insisting that IE was the recommended browser. Looks like they've regressed back to their old days.

Their non-support is staffed by humans hand-picked for an IQ of 14.63.

I've resisted using my GMail account because of privacy fears.

Recommendations? Thanks.

 

[ddrueding]

Recommendations? GMail. Do you really think the other players in the business aren't learning from Google? My internal reasoning is that Google has more transparency, or at least more people watching them, so are less likely to do something actually evil.

 

[Mercutio]

I really despise the GMail interface. I'm not terribly fond of Yahoo's either, but I don't have to use it very often since I don't use the webmail interface under normal circumstances.

Anyway, I've seen the behavior in question. Generally, if I switch away to another tab for a minute or so, everything comes back and behaves fine. I suspect that the "web 2.0" interface loads long enough before your actual data that it creates some confusion about when your mail is actually available.

Anyway, I'd suggest a move to Ypops! plus a normal email program, but I know some strange people actually like not having mail on their PC...

Also there's a user pref to revert to original Yahoo mail, IIRC. At least, there is for me.

 

[CityK]

Anyway, I'd suggest a move to Ypops! plus a normal email program

How about TB and the WebMail addon ... and while I'm at it, the Get Mail addon for FF is useful too.

 

[mubs]

Thanks for the suggestions, folks.

dd, Google's privacy policy seems to be especially obnoxious to me - much like what Tannin and Mercutio have said in other threads, it's a case of "all your data belongs to us". Another issue is having to tell everybody to send to my google a/c instead of yahoo. Sigh.....

Merc, I'll try your switch tabs trick and see if that helps. I do prefer to have my email on my PC. I use Ypops, but in batch mode. I use Yahoo email online, but periodically suck all mail off Yahoo into my system. I still use Netscalpe 4.7 as my email program, and it seems to have problems using Ypops/Yahoo for two-way communication.

The last time I used TBird, I didn't like it; Netscalpe still seemed better despite being so old. Since CityK says TBird 2.0 Beta is good, maybe I should give it another try and link up with Yahoo mail.

 

[Tannin]

Yours isn't the only problem with Yahoo. I have a customer who has had persistant problems with Yahoo mail doing weird stuff, not showing up in the browser, not refreshing properly, all sorts of weird stuff. His browser? IE 6. (He uses a locked-down corporate machine and can't use any other browser.)

But there is worse, much worse......

• Yahoo Funding Spyware? http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3531491
• Yahoo's Spyware Problem Not Going Away http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060925/095247.shtml
• The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection -- and Yahoo's Role Revisited http://www.benedelman.org/news/040406-1.html
• Yahoo Implicated in Spyware "Click Fraud" http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/04/yahoo_click_fraud.html
• Yahoo Plays Favorites with Some Adware http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1605578,00.asp

There is lots more damning evidence around, just hit Google and type in "yahoo" and "spyware". That mob make the Google crowd look like nice, decent people.

PS: if you really want a laugh, hit Yahoo and type in the same thing. It's a hoot!

 

[mubs]

Sigh. The devil or the deep blue sea. Unfortunately, I have to use web mail. And changing email addresses is a pain. I used to use a forwarding service so I had a single email address for years, but that will expire this May. It also ended up on spam lists.