From:  Cari Machet i wondered what happened - i tried to send you a note about getting ur pgp key validated in san fran - will send again why are you using them as an email provider again?

    About my email crash:  I am merely temporarily going to 'jamesdbell9@yahoo.com', to allow me to communicate with yahoo, hopefully to restore my past emails and address book.  Once things are back in place, I will probably migrate to a Gmail account, or something else if people recommend it. (Raising the question:  Is there a reasonably straightforward mechanism to allow a disgusted user to (easily and automatically) transfer all of his emails from one system to another?  Obviously, email service providers are motivated to try to lock in users, but maybe there's a way to fight this.)  When I think that the hard drive on my computer has probably 300 gigabytes of freespace left, and I doubt whether the space necessary to store ALL of my inbox emails (and a large folder as well) probably wouldn't require 1 gigabyte!  One of the major problems with dealing with the 'cloud' computing is that we become dependent on the incompetence of third parties, for storing and maintaining services.  In principle, such people might be _more_ competent and capable, but at this point I very much long for the possibility of maintaining a 'personal backup' of email on my own computer, in parallel with anything stored elsewhere.     So far, Yahoo has reflexively claimed that the account was terminated for 'abuse', but I think I understand what happened.,  It gave me a request to re-login since it had been a long time since I'd done that (maybe 2 weeks?); cautious about 'phishing', I opened a new window and pointed to 'Yahoo.com' and tried to log in.  I think that the system was confused, because (presumably) I was still logged onto Yahoo, the window requesting that I re-log-in.  (It is possible that this is what the computer interpreted as 'abuse'; in any case the first-level staffers have, so far, merely repeated what their software claimed.)     In hindsight, what I suspect I SHOULD have done was to completely log off Yahoo, and THEN open up a new window and log back on.  Yahoo had some major outages about December 11, 2013   http://allthingsd.com/20131211/kick-the-can-yahoo-mail-is-a-consumer-disaste...    At least then, they said they'd work to restore people's data; I intend to use that promise against them.     As for a PGP key:  I have not made a PGP key yet.  I will do so before I come down to the SF area to get it signed.  However, understand that I don't really view any PGP key I generate as being 'safe':  I am virtually assuming that my computer is, inherently, a major honey-pot (simply because it is owned by "Jim Bell"), which means that there are probably a few dozen instances of national-level malware in it, transmitting my every keystroke to NSA, GCHQ, and just about everyone else who cares.  Including, of course, my passphrases.  <sigh>  One thing I will want to have happen in San Francisco is to allow the meeting to exercise their anti-cracker skills to find out just how many nations have compromised my computer.  Might as well.     I renew my offer to engage in Skype video calls with anyone, as a reasonably good proof of my identity.  It occurred to me that I could disconnect my computer from power and wired (ethernet) Internet service, maintaining WiFi, and walk out the front door of my house, all the while during said Skype call, and show (behind me) my house and car (1995 Suzuki Sidekick JLX), at the address 7214 Corregidor, Vancouver WA 98664 USA.  Anyone who installs Google Earth should be able to 'Streetview', verifying what the house looks like, etc.         Jim Bell A picture of me from the web:  (I still wear this sweater:  I didn't have access to it, and thus didn't wear it out, during my vacation(s) at the Federal "gated communities" during most of 1997-2012.  I probably still have the shirt, too!) On Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:34 AM, Cari Machet wrote: i wondered what happened - i tried to send you a note about getting ur pgp key validated in san fran - will send again why are you using them as an email provider again? On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:44 PM, jim bell wrote: My email provider, the idiots at Yahoo.com, crashed my email address account 'jamesdbell8@yahoo.com' last Sunday.   I have lost my email addresses, as well as all emails.  For now, I will have to operate on a new email address, 'jamesdbell9@yahoo.com'.   At this point, Yahoo is my #1 enemy, and I expect them to be "The first against the wall when the revolution comes".

         Jim Bell

-- Cari Machet NYC 646-436-7795 carimachet@gmail.com AIM carismachet Syria +963-099 277 3243 Amman +962 077 636 9407 Berlin +49 152 11779219 Twitter: @carimachet https://twitter.com/carimachet Ruh-roh, this is now necessary: This email is intended only for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use of this information, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this email without permission is strictly prohibited.

On 1/30/14 2:20 PM, jim bell wrote:

(Raising the question: Is there a reasonably straightforward mechanism to allow a disgusted user to (easily and automatically) transfer all of his emails from one system to another? Obviously, email service providers are motivated to try to lock in users, but maybe there's a way to fight this.)

IMAP. I have IMAP set up on my Yahoo account: Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com Port: 993 Username: xxx@yahoo.com SSL/TLS Then I can just transfer messages to another IMAP account.

Thank you for posting this.  You know the old saying, "misery loves company".  This fact should apply additional pressure to Yahoo to fix the problem for 'everybody' including me.  I will cite this material to Yahoo, hopefully to shame them into claiming that I 'abused' my email account.  (They STILL haven't explained what the nature of the 'abuse' was.) 'Somebody' needs to solve the 'password problem'.   Others (but not me) may be strongly tempted to re-use the same password in many sites.  I always thought that was foolish to the highest degree:  It would powerfully motivate people to set up 'honey-pot' websites, if for no other purpose that to collect passwords, figuring (correctly, unfortunately) that a large segment of society would re-use passwords.  Maybe this is already a well-discussed matter,  and I understand that a partial solution includes the use of fingerprint readers, rings, and possibly retina-scans.          Jim Bell On Thursday, January 30, 2014 4:00 PM, manning bill wrote: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/30/yahoo-detects-mass-hack-attempt-on-yahoo-ma... its not just jim... /bill Neca eos omnes.  Deus suos agnoscet. On 30January2014Thursday, at 15:19, David wrote:

On 1/30/14 2:20 PM, jim bell wrote:

...

(Raising the question:  Is there a reasonably straightforward mechanism to allow a disgusted user to (easily and automatically) transfer all of his emails from one system to another?  Obviously, email service providers are motivated to try to lock in users, but maybe there's a way to fight this.)

IMAP.

I have IMAP set up on my Yahoo account:

Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com Port: 993 Username: xxx@yahoo.com SSL/TLS

Then I can just transfer messages to another IMAP account.

Maybe related to this semi-breach? http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/75083532312/important-security-update-for-yahoo... Looks like someone took a previously leaked DB of emails/passwords and ran it against Yahoo's servers. On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 6:19 PM, David wrote:

On 1/30/14 2:20 PM, jim bell wrote:

(Raising the question: Is there a reasonably straightforward mechanism

...

to allow a disgusted user to (easily and automatically) transfer all of his emails from one system to another? Obviously, email service providers are motivated to try to lock in users, but maybe there's a way to fight this.)

IMAP.

I have IMAP set up on my Yahoo account:

Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com Port: 993 Username: xxx@yahoo.com SSL/TLS

Then I can just transfer messages to another IMAP account.

-- konklone.com | @konklone https://twitter.com/konklone

By Moon Jones:

Actually the idiot is someone who just does not back up important data. A double idiot I see. I guess that's the trouble with large providers: they let anybody in. Hence the bad publicity.

 I assume Yahoo DOES 'back up important data'.  The problem here is different:  The Yahoo computer system probably (falsely) figured that there was suspicious activity going on.  (It probably saw my logon Sunday, while I was still logged on in another window, as being suspicious).  I did not anticipate that my doing what I did was going to be a problem.  The big problem is that the Yahoo computer system precipitately reacted, quite improperly, by not merely suspending the account, but by actually deleting the entire account!   This is the computer equivalent of 'insanity'. I have heard it said that computer features that are infrequently (or even rarely) used do not tend to be perfected.  ("Software rot"; see    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot   )   Since only rarely would this kind of situation occur, a bug in the system would tend not to be quickly found.  Also, you are wrong for a second reason.  Yahoo (or any other email provider) could easily set up their system to keep a backup of the email data on the user's computer.  While that data, too, would be vulnerable to various events, the probability that BOTH the 'cloud'-kept data AND the user-computer-kept data becoming unavailable simultaneously should be exceedingly low.  Probably one of the reasons Yahoo doesn't take this precaution is that they are trying to lock-in users to their system.  If they gave a user's computer a copy of the entire content of the user's data, it would be too easy (for Yahoo's purposes) for the user to transfer his data to another email system:  Competing email systems would be motivated to write software to adopt such data into a new account. Even so, I have done a Google search for an email-account transfer service.  (Turns out they exist!).  What I'd really like to do is to obtain a new email address, but simultaneously maintain 'jamesdbell8' as one email address, instructing yahoo to automatically transfer any incoming mail to a second address.  This feature would greatly ease the difficulty of transferring to a different email account.         Jim Bell  On Thursday, January 30, 2014 12:02 PM, Moon Jones wrote: Actually the idiot is someone who just does not back up important data. A double idiot I see. I guess that's the trouble with large providers: they let anybody in. Hence the bad publicity. On Thu, Jan 30, 2014, at 18:44, jim bell wrote:

My email provider, the idiots at Yahoo.com, crashed my email address account 'jamesdbell8@yahoo.com' last Sunday.   I have lost my email addresses, as well as all emails.  For now, I will have to operate on a new email address, 'jamesdbell9@yahoo.com'.   At this point, Yahoo is my #1 enemy, and I expect them to be "The first against the wall when the revolution comes".          Jim Bell

Hi,

I assume Yahoo DOES 'back up important data'. The problem here is different: The Yahoo computer system probably (falsely) figured that there was suspicious activity going on. (It probably saw my logon

That is why you should use local mail client for reading e-mail and not webmail. You can also set that your local client stores a copy of your mail locally (for instance with POP3). With IMAP you can move e-mails from one provider to anothe easily. So in that case it is very easy to move from one mail provider to another. Then you can use a cloud and send your *encrypted copy* of local mail there. Ubuntu for instance offers 2Gb for free. And they also have a tool called Duplicity, which is able so make an encrypted backup - you just set it up and it works automatically. Regards, M.