Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail is Yahoo's email service at https://mail.yahoo.com/.
According to https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/empty-mailbox-yahoo-mail-sln29338.html "If you haven't signed in to Yahoo Mail for 12 months or more, your mailbox is considered inactive. An inactive mailbox stops receiving new emails, and all mailbox contents, folders, contacts and settings are permanently deleted."
"Cloud storage" websites are known for deleting user's files after one year of not signing in or being active, but email websites are not known for this treachery; maybe Yahoo will be pioneers in this type of mass deletion. (Email messages are usually small-filesize plain text content which sometimes have one a few megabytes of attachments; small filesizes notwithstanding, Yahoo will delete it.)
Questionable
The following email is suggestive of Yahoo purging user's inboxes after one month of not logging into their email account at mail.yahoo.com. Said email, from https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/# (where #=one or more numbers):
Account Alert: Sign in to [redacted]@yahoo.com to continue receiving emails. Yahoo/Inbox Yahoo Mail <yahoo@mail.comms.yahoo.net> Unsubscribe To: [redacted]@yahoo.com [Received:] Tue, Jun 1 at 11:44 PM [Tue, 2021-06-01 23:44:34 +0000] Yahoo! Dear [redacted], We noticed that you haven’t signed in to your mailbox [redacted]@yahoo.com in a while. If you would like to continue receiving emails in this account, please visit Yahoo Mail and log in by July 30, 2021. If you do not log back in, this account will stop receiving email messages and the entire contents of your mailbox will be subject to deletion, including all email messages, settings, and folders. Another way to keep your email account active and prevent the contents of your mailbox from being deleted is to upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus. With an active Yahoo Mail Plus subscription, your emails won’t get deleted during long periods of inactivity. Plus, enjoy other benefits like ad-free email, extra security features and 24/7 tech support. You can upgrade at https://www.yahoo.com/plus/mail. Please visit https://mail.yahoo.com/?ncid=revive to continue to receiving emails. If you forgot your password or need help logging in, please visit: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/SLN2051.html We hope to see you soon! Sincerely, The Yahoo Mail Team For additional information, please visit the Yahoo Mail policy page at: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/empty-mailbox-yahoo-mail-sln29338.html Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Customer Support ©2021 Yahoo 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089
(A raw/un-rendered version of this message from https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/[...] may be made available in the future.)
Oddly, the Yahoo account in question was probably last logged into 1 or 2 months before 2021-06-01, not 12 months before.
External links
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/10/yahoo-deleted-all-my-emails-and-theres-nothing-i-can-do-about-it
- https://twitter.com/search?q=yahoo%20deleted%20email&src=typed_query&f=live
- https://twitter.com/waywardcalico/status/1403014482146824197 - title: "wayward calico cat squad on Twitter: "This morning I logged in to a Yahoo account I’ve had for 15+ years. When I logged in and got a message - due to inactivity my inbox was deleted. Every single email I ever received from my deceased father is now gone forever. Another piece of him lost to me. Thanks, @YahooCare" / Twitter"