I've had a Yahoo! account practically as long as I've been on the Internet. I've practically abandoned the mail because of the amount of spam it receives every day, but I still use it from time to time and it has a lot of historical and nostalgic value due to the e-mails that are still in there.

I've also used my account for the Yahoo! Answers service to help spread information about credit freezes and avoiding scams like lifelock. I'm guessing that last one is why I got a generic letter like this:

Long story short, I asked them for an explanation, and their responses were all BS of one form or another. I used to have a lot longer and more detailed description of what happened next, but rather than get into all that, I'll leave it as simple advice: when something like this happens, complaining to the Better Business Bureau and consumer protection sites like the Consumerist for publicity are good, but won't probably help. Yahoo has the right to deal with whoever they want and, at best, you can argue that as a company that so aggressively entices people to use their services, they have at least some measure of obligation to treat people fairly, but that's a stretch.

In the end, the best possible thing you can do is avoid using Yahoo! services. There are plenty of alternatives out there and I, for one, have no interest in spending time and energy on an account that can be disabled at any time for no valid reason.

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GoDaddy, an Internet hosting provider that's no stranger to controversy of its own, has pulled hosting of RateMyCop.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

I wouldn't touch GoDaddy hosting with a ten foot pole. If you're hosted with them, find someone else. Now.

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My first thought is to be very cautious about using an online password checker to test the strength of your passwords because you might inadvertantly give away your password to a rogue site. However, this Microsoft sponsored password checker requires no logins or personal information and being that it's a fairly well-known company, chances are smaller that they would abuse the info if they even store it (which I can't imagine it being cost-effective to do so).

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Lest one think of torrents and illegal downloads at the same time, it's worth reminding the public that torrents are just a file distribution system and one that has many legitimate uses. For example, one IT department used torrent technology to distribute a set of system patches and upgrades in just four hours. The same patch would have previously taken over 4 days!

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Lifehacker has an interesting article about managing your online reputation. They talk about how to tell when new information about you surfaces (setting up a Google alert) and how to amend or respond to negative information. There are also ways to artifically improve the way you're viewed online (your own blog).

It's a good read for anyone who's concerned about what people will find when searching for your name online.

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The New York Times is running an article about Facebook's data retention issues. If you post to Facebook, even if you delete your account later, they keep the data available for public viewing.

It took Mr. Das about two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook’s customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das’s empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.

eBay

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In what is perhaps the dumbest move eBay has ever made, they are planning to eliminate the ability to leave negative or neutral feedback. Positive feedback is already pointless with a horde of robotic responses left only for bragging rights:

AAAAA+++++ Buyer!

Would Buy again!

Fast Shipping. Excellent Seller!

What does any of this mean? NOTHING. If you want the real scoop, it used to be only the negative feedback that would give it to you. Besides, if you DO get scammed, it's not like eBay will do anything about it so the negative feedback was the only thing that would protect you.

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There are already plenty of cases of adults or college students who have lost jobs and dropped out of school due to MMO gaming obsessions. Now we're going to unleash this on our kids?

If you're thinking of letting you kid play an MMO, be very careful about what game you choose and be sure to set limits on how and when they play.

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Video here

Picture propaganda here

Personally, I worry about power like that turned in the wrong direction, but while it's only focused on corrupt organizations, I have ho qualm.

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Consumeraffairs.com did a study of whether they could locate teen girls on MySpace and the results aren't surprising.

By doing simple searches with no special tools or gimmicks, they were easily able to find profiles of girls that were set to public (meaning anyone could read them) that contained more than enough information to find and contact them or their parents.

Parents need to make sure they're involved and knowledgeable about what their kids are doing online while resisting the temptation to ban kids from the Internet completely.