When Yahoo was down for 3 days a few weeks ago a major change was made that they didn't tell ANYONE about. They have added "Marketing preferences" to your list of user preferences. It asks which offers and emails you wish to recieve, but the default is YES, so your preferences are set so that Yahoo may sell your name and email address to whomever they wish. The only way to stop this is to edit your preferences, but so few people even KNOW about this that no one is doing it, so Yahoo is making a tidy sum selling your information *with your legal permisson*.
It doesn't stop there, they are also selling your real home address and phone in the same manner. If you scroll to the bottom of the page it asks if you want to recieve offers at your home address and phone.
Again, the default setting is YES.I recommend that anyone who has a Yahoo account, immediately go to your preferences in Yahoo and change the Marketing Preferences setting (it's in the same section as your email addresses).
Go to
http://edit.my.yahoo.com , log in, click on "Account Settings" in the upper right corner. you will need to confirm log-in. Look at your profile: immediately under your e-mail addresses you will see "Edit My Marketing Preferences."
The defaults are "Yes" for every newsletter and to allow sale/trade of any address or phone information.
damn i hate Yahoo.