I am oh so very angry with Yahoo right now.
Occassionally when forwarding an email I’ve gotten a captcha screen where I have to input the correct letters and numbers or my email will not be sent. It might happen when sending from my sbcglobal account (main account for SBC/Yahoo DSL) or it might happen with domain emails. While it’s always been annoying, it’s never been a problem before.
Of course, it’s also perplexing. Why must I have to do this? I’ve had a good standing sbclgobal account for over a year as a DSL customer and before that I used Yahoo email for at least six or seven years… seriously. So, I, obviously not a new account, have to enter a captcha? Why?!
Well, today, I wrote a decent sized email in reply to one from Anita that was sent to my sbcglobal account. I was replying. Not forwarding. Not even starting a new email.
I wrote the email, sent it and got the captcha screen. I entered the letters and numbers as were shown…
…and then was told that I was incorrect, that my email had not been sent… OR saved. I lost it all.
I sent Yahoo a nasty letter.
Then I had to go back and try to remember everything I’d written to Anita. Guess what? I got hit by the captcha again!!
This time there were more letters and this time I passed. Thankfully. Okay, so for some reason my email kept flagging them, but even besides the whole thing of me having to do the captcha in the first place after being a good customer for this long, why does it not save my email to drafts or give me another try or something? That is just daft.
So you, any of you have this problem ever? This SO makes me want to just stop supporting them I’m so ticked off.
50 Comments
That sucks hardcore :/ This is why I only use Yahoo for messenger and GIN! ;) I never did like their email setup anyway :(
I use Thunderbird for EVERYTHING, so luckily I do not have that problem. But oh my wow. I’d be pissed! Especially since it isn’t saving a draft or anything.
Ha…that’s pretty funny….I just told her IM to try Thunderbird lol. That’s what I use too :)
I never used Thunderbird before. I honestly kinda like the Yahoo setup. It’s great for using my domain mail. I wasn’t able to send from my domains through this or my last ISP with Outlook. The mail servers didn’t want to accept anything.
Well see…Thunderbird is far superior to Outlook! It’s a Mozilla product! You know I would be more than happy to help you get it up and running properly! :)
I’ve never ever had to view a screen like that and I’ve had my Yahoo! account for well over a year now, maybe a year and a half… that’s ridiculous. Maybe it’s just the sbcglobal accounts? I don’t know.. but that must be really annoying :( I’m sorry.
Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora – none of it will matter. :) It’s that the SBC/Yahoo outgoing mailservers won’t let you use any outgoing servers but their own. Same with the ISP I had before them. I think there might be a way I figured out how to trick them, but it was on someone else’s computer using Earthlink, so I dunno. Plus, I am all set up now where I am. :P
Hey, haven’t we discussed this before? :)
Actually, Chelsea, now that I think of it, I signed up for a Yahoo account for some project or something and an email I set from there, the first one and only one, got the Captcha. That email is discontinued now, we decided we didn’t need it.
Psst…GMail :-)
Pssst. :) I’ve “theatened” Yahoo with that many times. They don’t care. I’m just one customer.
But Gmail has A LOT to learn as far as handling external mail accounts before I fully switch over. Also, the option to use folders instead of the tag-thingies or along with them would be a good idea, too.
Losing the words you wrote just because you didn’t pass the captcha is just craze! I’ve lost posts because my old computer crashed all the time, and it’s so annoying, not to mention hard, to recreate a mail….
Hope the rest of the weekend is good :D
I love gmail! But I guess it depends on your personal preferences.
Oh, I adore Gmail as well, it just can’t quite handle what I need for my business. Yet. When it does, I’ll consider a full move. But my family can never get it when I change an email address – it takes them a year to finally change over their address book links. So none of them have my Gmail yet. ;-)
Well, apparently when I sent Yahoo the angry letter, it was sent to SBC instead. So they actually did something about it (unlike the usual protocol of Yahoo’s help team) and sent me an email saying they were going to call me.
They called while I was out at Best Buy (Saturday) and our call forwarding sent it over to my cell phone but I didn’t answer it in time. They called again last night (Sunday around 9pm lol) and we had a little chat.
Wow, aye?
It’s only “wow” if they’re going to do something about it. Though, I *AM* surprised they actually called you.
Yeah that’s true and she did kind of mention something in the way of making sure Yahoo knew this and should work in some functionality. Blah blah blah.
Of course, she was kind of hard to hear thanks to my kid and I had to watch myself because I tend to occassionally take on people’s accents without meaning to and she had a dang good one. :)
Oh, I must also mention that not only did they call me twice but the first guy actually left a voicemail… Even some of my friends don’t leave voicemails. :P
Val,
I have a computer consulting client who is retired with severe low vision problems, so cannot deal with the Captcha problem. Any thoughts on how to appeal her case to the Yahoo powers that be at Yahoo Mail or SBC?
If you can reply here, I will be looking for the assistance.
Thanks.
The only way I would know would be to call them directly (Yahoo) and see if it can be removed on her account. Remind them how long she and you have been good customers for sure and explain her disability as thoroughly as possible.
Does she encounter the Captcha a lot?
I am a paying Yahoo Mail customer, and this text verification thing really upsets me. I emailed their customer care, but they said they can’t remove it from my account. I guess we are in the process of revolting.
I’ve been getting hit with the Captcha a lot more than I was, since I posted this post. But they seem to have implemented a new feature as well, you get a second chance if you fail. There was one last week where I failed it twice. I don’t even know why, as far as I could see I was entering in the characters correctly. So I had three tries to get it, I’m not sure how many it will give you.
Yes, you’re right. SBCGlobal servers, which are Yahoo mail servers in reality, will not allow such email to be sent if it’s trying to use Captcha on that specific email [I may be mistaken]. I’ve been hit with that in the past few weeks and was surprised. I passed the retarded letter test, though.
It is extremely stupid, yes, to discard the email is the letters do not match; really really retarded. Yep, we are in the process of revolting and I also have a sbcglobal account.
Did Yahoo respond to you yet?
This is so so very annoying. I was having to do the captcha thing almost every email because i email to a foriegn domain! SO SO ANNOYING!!!! But my friend is on yahoo.pl! so its still yahoo! I hope they drop this soon!
this captcha game must stop…I am human not a computer…
what do you want changed??? I want captcha removed, or what I can do to eliminate it…
Doug, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by your second comment. Yahoo doesn’t care a lick about what I say anymore. Now I’m even seeing ads on my stuff even though I wasn’t supposed to, as a paying SBC (now ATT) customer. But it seems that since it became ATT, in came the ads. Too bad they’re the only DSL we can get in our area right now…
Anyway, this post was originally from a year ago and since then Yahoo seems to have made it so that if you fail the captcha that you will not lose your email but get to try again. As I mentioned in a comment above, there was once where I failed twice. However, I rarely encounter the captcha at all anymore. I do think though, that every time the word “password” is in the email, it gets caught, I have noticed that…
Are you losing emails because of the captcha?
I also have had this problem on a continual basis and it got so bad that I have had to abandon my Yahoo account. Also, I noticed when the e-mails were flagged for the extra word entry, that about half of them didn’t go through to the intended recipient AT ALL especially other Yahoo accounts. It continually gets worse and it seems that Yahoo’s software can’t tell the difference between a legitimate user and a spammer.
I just started having problems with the “Captcha Project” today and am equally frustrated. Yahoo chat had no answer, I have not heard from the “abuse” “police” at Yahoo. I even called the professor in charge of the “Captcha Project” at Carnegie Mellon and he indicated this has nothing to do with his project but it is an AT&T problem. Have you found a solution? I expect to sit on the phone with them tomorrow.
No, I have not yet seen a real solution, but I also have not been triggering the captcha lately. I didn’t trigger it much after that and when I did, it had changed that it didn’t throw away my message. And now I use Thunderbird so that I have not seen a captcha ever. I’m not sure what would happen to messages that would normally trigger a captcha when using a program like Thunderbird or if they can…
Can the captcha program be removed from files in my computer or are they part of a program thats in yahoos servers ..?
This is the response I received from the AT&T Abuse site. I have not gone further with my problem because it has mysteriously stopped for the moment and I have not gotten the “Captcha” screen lately. NV
Hello,
It appears you have received an image verification test within Yahoo!
Mail. Yahoo! has implemented this process to combat spammers from using
automated programs to exploit the Yahoo! Mail system to protect the
internet community and you from unsolicited email. If you have received
an image verification page but do not feel your email was unsolicited in
nature, again we apologize for the inconvenience.
For more information regarding this measure, please contact
abuse@yahoo.com
Thank you,
The AT&T Internet Abuse Department
@ Mark — It’s a Yahoo thing, it’s not on your computer.
@ New Victim – sorry, missed that your comment was in moderation before. Yeah, Yahoo’s pretty inept in any department of help. It’s like talking with a monkey.
I curse the sombitches who developed this…it continues to invade my space…I dont want it but it comes back and back and back…I emailed Mellon and they have an excuse…
thus, I curse the jerks who developed this…when the voodoo guy I hired stuck his needle into the doll I relished the thought that some rotten bastard was having a major tummie ache. Next we do the cranial area and we hope the bastart cannot develop any other ludicrous device which allows unauthorized visits to our privacy.
It goes on and on and on…the onlyest solution is to junk yahoo for another service.
Believe me, yahoo does not care about this.
I will take the above suggestions and look into G-Mail.
In the meantime I continue to curse the developers and the implementers of this pox.
Mike
have not been able to send mail yo yahoo for 24 hours
man this captha is making me nuts, i even write the right code but the “I D” of the person chatting cant be seen it is just wirtten there captha and nothing happens i dont know why man this stinks i have not been able to open chat since months. it just maks me mad
there is no one worthy of worship except only one God. he is single and prophet Muhammad is the last and final messenger of God
This is shohel from Bangladesh. we are doing some captcha project like gmail,hotmail & my space. But i want to do yahoo captcha. i’ll give u 24 hours and 6 days support without out yarly holiday. We give 20 computers support at first time. And give 13000 data per system.
Sir, i think i’ll full fill ur requermants & hope to ur quick response.
Thanking on
Md.shohel.
Md.shohel, I’m sorry, but I do not understand what you are saying or wanting.
I think YAHOO WILL GONA BE MAD AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE :).AND WE CALL YAHOO “CAPTCHA YAHOO” =)).
This site cheered me up immensely. I somewhat recently switched to yahoo mail. Even more recently I have been plagued with the captcha crap. After reaching upper level tech “support” that consisted of them emailing me a canned spiel about captcha, and repeating that spiel when I wrote them back, I have gone postal on yahoo and am currently torturing the techs with captcha comments. Every time I get captcha I write the techs a chatty note and tell them there will be a quiz. I just sent this link to every saved tech address I had, with appropriate snotty comments. Hasn’t solved the captcha problem, but at least I’m smiling now. My goal (after they finally get the message that they have to call me in the morning if they want to talk to me in person), is to get one of them to scream at me on the phone, or, better yet, quit their job and run screaming from the building. The only thing that will stop me from torturing them is if the captcha crap goes away permanently or I go on a long vacation away from my computer. I have endless patience and the tendency to carry a grudge. Maybe the techs will get so fed up they will start a rebellion against the ATTyahoo corp stance on captcha. yeah right.
The difference between Google and Yahoo is that Google acts like they care about their customers. Yahoo won’t even pretend they do. Gotta give them that – they don’t give a **** about you and they’re proud of it. Kudos.
I’m a seventy yr. old woman with cataracts, and I can’t read that hen scratching. You would think they could tell the difference between a robot and a person by now. I was suprised to know this has been going on science 2006.
Yeah they’ve been pulling this for a while. Also, I don’t play games there very often but now they’ve added a captcha to get into the main game room and I tell you what, I have to try at least 3 times to get into any of them because I apparently can’t read the letters either!
I cannot read the captcha and have lost my email
send
I’m upset, too. My problem’s even worse: lately, I don’t get a blamed cursor in the captcha box and can’t type in the stupid letters! That is, I can’t even send out any e-mail! I first told them about it 2 months ago when it was intermittent (and I was on a completely different PC) but now it won’t stop, even with a reboot of my PC. I had to use their stupid “feedback” webscreen just to clue them that it was now over 2 months later and despite their promises of a speedy fix the problem has become worse, not better.
i overcame captcha by using it once then it went
Yahoo Captcha wont even allow me to enter the letters. Can’t reply or forward mail due to this…..WTF?
Get this… I set up a yahoo group and every single f*@!#@g time I post, I get Captcha. And I AM legally blind (without correction). They now say they don’t want vision-impaired people to go, and give an address (for a second) to write… but it is just their regular contact us email.
1) I wish I had never started a group at yahoo 2) I guess I am going to go to gmail and give up yahoo. Have been with them years and years, but they seem totally incompetent. Do they really thing the owner of a group is going to go thru Captcha ever single post? And I’m noticing Captcha all over the place on other accounts (for groups I don’t own and rarely use).
Maybe they don’t want to have free accounts? That could be it. They want to drive us away. If so, it is working
sent urgently
sent captcha in mamun_bangla2002@yahoo.com
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