Yahoo recently announced it would “recycle” old usernames to let more people get access to the email addresses they really want. As of this weekend, any Yahoo username not accessed in the past year was put up for grabs for others to claim; you can soon put in requests for usernames you might want, and will be notified in August if you can claim one you requested. Yahoo hasn’t mentioned how many accounts this will affect – other than to say it will happen to “a lot” of them – but it sounds like a cool idea at first. But take a minute and think about how many sites have password recovery features linked to your e-mail account, and things start to get a little hairy. Yahoo has said not to worry: it is implementing a process aimed to safeguard users and will do some cleanup work to ensure data doesn’t end up in the wrong place. To protect your Yahoo account – and your data – make sure to log into Yahoo once a year.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.