WTF? my rant about Yahoo! Hotjobs
6 Comments Published November 20th, 2002 in marketing + advertisingSo, I get this email from hotjobs.com yesterday saying that I need to sign up for a yahooID to access my hotjobs.com account. I thought about it for maybe 5 minutes, then decided “fuck them… I don’t need no stinkin’ hotjobs” and deleted the email.
Today, I get home, and I had received an email from Yahoo! with the subject line “Yahoo! Newsletter, November 2002″ and I’m thinking, what the fuck is this?
I surely didn’t read the email, but I did look at the bottom and find this:
“You received this email because the account information for jengler8415 indicates that Yahoo! may contact you. If you do not want to receive further Yahoo! Newsletter mailings, unsubscribe by clicking here To learn more about Yahoo!’s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy.”
And I’m thinking to myself “jengler8415″ that’s a username I’d never come up with in a million years on my own… because it includes part of my home phone number, which I’d never use in a username, or a password for that matter, and I’m starting to put 2 and 2 together. Those bastards took my old hotjobs account and some personally identifiable information (my phone number and my name) and constructed an account in their spam sending system that says that “Yahoo! may contact you.”
I wonder if I can sue their asses for spamming me? Hmmm… a lot of those cases are being won by people lately…
Jeremy? Are you reading this?
Tell your idiot marketing department that whomever came up with this dumb ass idea should be fired for putting the good name of Yahoo! at risk with however many people are signed up as hotjobs users and aren’t the least bit interested in receiving email from Yahoo!
I don’t really give a shit what all the agreements I’ve glanced over before hitting “I agree” say … the bottom line is that I never, NEVER, gave Yahoo! permission to email me. NEVER !!!
God… when a company like Yahoo! resorts to using shoddy marketing techniques, its a sad day indeed. Build a better company and people will come on their own volition… Build a company based on solid business principles and they’ll love you. Resort to spamming people and you might as well be Microsoft… and no, I don’t have a Passport account and am not interested in getting on thank you.
Damn, it really pains me to say this, but I now officially hate Yahoo! and will no longer be using hotjobs for anything… going there to delete all my information now thank you.
I’ll call a lawyer tomorrow I think…
[later] ok, I’ve deleted my Yahoo! account… I’m not calling a lawyer just yet, but I’m still mighty pissed. Yahoo!’s account deletion page told me it might take 90 days to destroy all information associated with my ‘account’ that they seemed to be able to create of their own free will in under 24 hours… at least that’s all it too for them to send me spam… God, I’m really disappointed in Yahoo! for this one…
6 Responses to “WTF? my rant about Yahoo! Hotjobs”
- 1 Trackback on Nov 20th, 2002 at 5:43 am
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in your sendmail config, do:
FEATURE(dnsbl,`ybl.megacity.org’,`Connection from Yahoo denied’)
I maintain a blacklist of all Yahoo’s address space, including space not assigned to *.yahoo.com machines (e.g., hotjobs, etc.)
Works great for preventing occurrences like that.
D
(former Yahoo)
I hate them with a passion but continue to use them because, among other reasons, the PHP list I’m on is with Y! Groups. I not only rely heavily on the PHP list, but I’m a moderator there as well. Anyhoo…
My main beef with Y! is that, over a year ago, I received one of those nifty pager watches, and thinking it would be cool to get info-alerts on my pager-watch, I signed it up with Y!’s Mobile service. After a few weeks, I got really tired of receiving info-pages, and removed my watch from the Mobile service.
I continued to get info-alerts. I double-checked my account to make sure I’d turned info-alerts off, removed the pager info from Y! Mobile, etc. Still got them. Emailed Y! “Tech Support” numerous times. They assured me they were working on it.
Continued to get them. Canceled the account. Still getting them. Emailed tech support half-a-dozen more times. Still getting them. Sent a nasty-gram to Y!’s in-house counsel, threatening lawsuits if they didn’t cease and desist. Still getting them.
My lawyer didn’t feel there was much of a case. The pager service expires today. I’m going to wait a month or two, and then resubscribe. I’m HOPING that will finally stop the damn info-alerts.
My other beef is that they have saturated their web pages and emails with so many frickin’ ads that it’s nearly impossible to find the content among the banners, flash popups, and other crap.
Welcome to the modern Yahoo. Anything for a buck!
Seriously, John, your message made the rounds at work a couple days ago (while I was at home barfing up a lung) on our internal “here’s where developers go to bitch about stuff” list. I haven’t caught up with the discussion, but I’m sure nobody really answered it.
I’ll try and track down the right HotJobs person to ask the “what the fuck?!” question and see what they say. But I’m not optimistic.
It’s quite sad, really. This isn’t the comapny I came to work for 3 years ago. If the economy wasn’t all shitty, I’d probably be updating my resume… (Oh, wait. Did that a month or so ago.)
It’s one thing to work for a company that pays you well and lets you work with cool technology. It’s another to have to pretend you don’t know what they’re really trying to do.
Ugh.
Hahahah!
I just noticed the internal Y! referers on the bottom of this page.
Classic.
At least you know some of them read it. I’m not making it up.
I’ve tried for months to delete my account at Hotjobs@yahoo.com. Please email me on how to do it. I do not see anything on your website that says to delete hotjobs@yahoo.com. Please email me on how to do it. Thank you.