POP Duplicates ALL emails in Online TRASH Folder

[LongTimeCust]

Hello Everyone,

It's recently come to my attention, because someone hacked Yahoo and sent spam to customers/friends, that the Online TRASH folder contains all OUTGOING and INCOMING email message when using POP.

This is correct, even if you have "Leave on Server" unchecked ,all your email communications are available and posted online in the TRASH folder. There is no way to turn this off. Unlike the SPAM folder, wich can be set to delete immediately, the Trash folder has no setting.

I have been an AT&T customer for 14 years. I have never...never seen this done before. I purposely keep everything empty in the online account, including contacts, to avoid infectious emails being sent to anyone. POP use to flow emails to and from your email client (Outlook) with no interaction or copies of anything available online. This new practice is a huge flaw and security breach in my opinion.

I read in the BT/Yahoo thread (UK) many are complaining about this issue for almost a year. The excuse given to them was this: "Messages are saved in the Trash folder to help those people who incorrectly configure their email retrieve lost message". WHAT? Well that's just hilarious - and might make sense if it were not POP customers. It was suggested to those customers; "You can login and Empty your Trash folder after sending messages". They expect people who use Outlook to delete the message on their PC, then login and delete the messages in their account.

It gets better. About 9 months ago many BT/Yahoo POP customers started asking for a new feature. They wanted a drop down option to "Delete Immediately"  any messages in the Trash folder. This is exactly how it is done done with the Spam folder. There were more bizarre reasons why this could not be added.

So something it up here with Yahoo mail. BE AWARE: POP IS NOT SECURE using Yahoo email services. Anyone who can hack into their servers or your account can directly access your email addresses and messages. These emails are deleted eventually but there is no setting to adjust that time frame.

Why am I so upset? I go to great lenghts to keep my email and PC's secure. No one from Yahoo every notified me they changed this policy. No one from Yahoo ever told me ALL POP EMAILS are viewable online - regardless if you uncheck "Leave on Server". Nowhere does it mention this. I often see accounts getting hacked at Yahoo and have been on the receiving end of these spam messages. This is a security issue that one small feature could fix. You can bank they will not add it. They must need your messages viewable to count towards advertising or something.

I pay ATT for my email service. I expected better than this horse patooey. I have a dozen people who recieved spam messages from me over the weekend - and now think I run a loose ship. Thanks Yahoo.

[LongTimeCust]

I forgot to mention - I had a customer, someone I had only emailed once, get a spam message from over the weekend. They informed me of the message and asked I sweep my PC if we are going to do business. This was impossible - I didn't have any of their contact information stored anywhere except paper on my desk. Their orignal email was deleted so how could this happen.

So I investigated out of curiousity the ATT Webmail to check things out. I was stunned to see every single one of my Inbound and Outbound emails over the last day or so was inside the TRASH folder. I recreated my email account in Outlook, figured it might be covertly using the "Leave on Server" setting even though it is unchecked. I sent a few test messages and sure enough, they immediately appeared in that Trash folder. Yup, I am PO'd about this.

There is no legitimate reason to do this with POP customers - and not provide a way to have them removed immediately. In fact, they should never appear in the first place.