Yahoo! Censors LMNOP, an Oakland peace group

Yahoo! censors LMNOP, an Oakland peace group

My wife & I have been active in Lake Merritt
Neighbors Organized for Peace, an Oakland antiwar
group, since it started during the Gulf War in 1991.
(For a history of LMNOP & more information about the
group see <http://lmno4p.org>).

Three years ago we got an email address for the
group, lmno4p [at] yahoo.com This seemed like a good way to stay in touch with other groups & people. We also used it to notify people of upcoming events, & other activities.

On August 8th, 2002, however, we found that we were
no longer able to access our email address at
lmno4p [at] yahoo.com Email sent to the address was
returned as "Undeliverable because the account has
been discontinued or disabled." We had been
"deactivated," the Yahoo! computer told us, "because
of a violation of the terms of service agreement."

I downloaded the Yahoo! terms of service agreement & read it again: There was absolutely nothing I could
find that we had done that would constitute a
violation of the agreement.

Emailed & snail-mailed inquiries to Yahoo! were
simply ignored. Yahoo!'s attitude appeared to be in
keeping with their terms of service agreement: They
will provide you with an email address, but they will
also block you from using it & delete everything you
might have stored in it whenever they feel like it,
for any reason or no reason at all, & there is nothing
you can do about it. Ignoring our inquiries simply
underscored these arrogant policies.

My wife, Beth, telephoned Yahoo! at (408)349-3300
earlier this week, & again yesterday. Her
conversations with four different people there were
most revealing, even if we are still barred from
getting into our account.

Earlier in the week Beth spoke with Laurie. Laurie
is a supervisor in the Yahoo! Customer Care unit.
Laurie told Beth that Yahoo! did not have to tell her
what the alleged terms of service violation was, nor
would they. She also said that the decision to shut
down an account is made by a human, not the computer, so someone had pulled the plug - but there was nothing we could do about it. Laurie also said that it is "their policy" not to give their last names.

Yesterday Beth talked with three different people at
Yahoo! The 1st was a woman in Customer Care who
transferred her call to Public Relations. The guy in
Public Relations (Brian) said that his department only
deals with the media, so basically there was really no
reason to talk with him at all. Brian wasn't sure why
the Customer Care person had transferred her to him, & he transferred Beth to Pablo, a supervisor in Customer Care.

Pablo assured Beth that lmno4p [at] yahoo.com had not
been shut-down for political reasons, but he also said that it is "their policy" not to say what the actual reason
was - &, most important, he said that a decision to
shut down an account is not made "unless a complaint
has been made." This confirms our suspicion that the
LMNOP account WAS shut down for political reasons -
There was no violation of the "terms of agreement" by
us, & Yahoo! refuses to say what the alleged violation
was, because there was none.

We don't think that Yahoo! pulled our plug because
they think we're some sort of threat to civilization
as we know it. We think Yahoo! overreacted to a
complaint by someone who disagrees with our politics, especially our public support for peace & justice in Palestine. Yahoo! figured that we are simply an obscure local group in Oakland, so they could treat us anyway they wanted to. Now that we are demanding answers & questioning their draconian "terms of service agreement" Yahoo! is stubbornly sticking to "their policies" - i.e., once they've shut you down there is no recourse, & they will not reinstate your account, nor even let you rescue any information that was stored there.

We had over 200 names on our email list stored in the lmno4p [at] yahoo.com account, & we had messages that we had not yet answered before Yahoo! pulled our plug. We have learned the hard way to never store anything in a Yahoo! account that you are not ready to have some misguided bureaucrat or political zealot delete.

I know these are troubled times, & the problems of
one small peace group in Oakland are miniscule
compared to what is going on in the rest of the world.
But it bothers me to think that a company like Yahoo!
can sabotage our work in such a heavy-handed way with no recourse whatsoever.

I tell you all this for three reasons: 1). To warn
you to be careful when you deal with Yahoo!; 2). To
ask if anyone has any ideas how we might bring Yahoo! to account for their reckless political sabotage; & 3). To see if anyone else has had similar experiences with Yahoo! or any of the other email service providers.

- Steve Wagner, Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized
for Peace, (510) 763-8712. http://lmno4p.org