Deciphering TheMouseForLess

Reading your MFL and Yahoo email: Marketing Preferences!
By Michael Boyer - 3/30/2002

THE FOLLOWING IS VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU READ YOUR TheMouseForLess EMAIL VIA A NON-YAHOO, or NON-WEB Tool! Please read it all!

To clarify Ric's warning below, DO NOT turn off or disable the "Yahoo! Delivers" Marketing preference. It is this specific marketing preference which currently pays for the POP3 and Forwarding services you might have with Yahoo. If you disable it, your POP3 access of your Yahoo email will also be disabled and you will no longer be able to read your MFL posts directly from MS Outlook or Outlook Express or any other POP3 enabled email tool you might be using. If you read your Yahoo email via the Web, this does not affect you. The "Yahoo! Delivers" option is the last option on the main Marketing options page. As far as I can tell you can safely turn off ALL OTHERS EXCEPT the Yahoo! Delivers option. At least I have! :-)

This will all be MOOT by April 24th, though, since on April 24th, Yahoo will make you pay for the existing POP3 and Forwarding features. It will cost $19.95 per year before 4/24 and $29.95 per year thereafter. YES, I think this is a crime! and I REFUSE to pay it. Fortunately you do not need to pay the charge to continue to receive TheMouseForLess.

Here is how to make sure you continue to receive all your precious MFL posts using whatever email tool you desire (MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc) WITHOUT paying Yahoo a cent!

- Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMouseForLess

- In the UPPER RIGHT hand corner click on "Edit My Membership"

- Under the "Email Address" section of your membership settings, make sure you have selected your non-yahoo email address which you joined Yahoo and MFL with. DO NOT select your Yahoo email address here. Everyone should have at least two email addresses to choose:
- the one you used to join Yahoo (In my case, m.r.boyer@att.net)
- the one you got from Yahoo after you joined (In my case, m.r.boyer@yahoo.com)
By choosing the non-Yahoo address here in your membership settings, all your MFL posts will be sent directly to that address without the need for any special forwarding or POP3 access features. Then you can simply use your normal email tool to read your MFL posts from your non-yahoo email address. For me, I use my ATT WorldNet email address, m.r.boyer@att.net. I also have an Earthlink address(m.r.boyer@earthlink.net) which I could also put in there.

If I've confused anyone, or you need more clarification or help with your specific situation, please feel free to email me at michael@TheMouseForLess.com (I have too many email addresses :-) LOL!

Once again, If you read your Yahoo email and MFL posts via the Yahoo Web interface, this does NOT impact you!

Again, to clarify, All of the attached information about marketing preferences, spam, and how to avoid it is accurate, EXCEPT that you should NOT disable(set to no) the "Yahoo! Delivers" feature if you use Yahoo's POP3 or Email Forwarding features. Disabling Yahoo! Delivers will also disable those features making it impossible for you to read your Yahoo email/posts with your external email tool, like MS Outlook or Outlook Express. If some of you have all of a sudden noticed difficulty reading or accessing your TheMouseForLess posts, it may be because you inadvertently turned this option off, not knowing its effect.