Time to Switch From Yahoo to Gmail?

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Yahoo’s new owner, Verizon, recently revealed that all 3 billion Yahoo accounts have been compromised, greatly upping the admission of damage that Yahoo made before its sale to the telecom giant. So if you have a Yahoo account, it’s time to find another email service provider that will better protect your email privacy and security, and yes if you tied your yahoo account to secondlife then that was also compromised. Here’s my advice on how to switch to Gmail…

Moving Yahoo Mail to Gmail

If you have not changed your Yahoo password recently, it is 100% certain that hackers have the keys to it. Not Good. The recent revelation that hackers were able to compromise all of Yahoo’s THREE BILLION accounts is mind-blowing. It’s time to leave Yahoo Mail in the digital dustbin of history, and move to a new webmail provider.

You may be loathe to leave your contacts and emails behind. But don’t worry, you can take them with you! Google’s Gmail (my preferred email service for 12+ years) makes the process of importing contacts and mail from Yahoo (and other services) as simple as it can be. That isn’t exactly “dead simple,” but most users should be able to do it in just a few minutes.

The first thing you should do is change your Yahoo password to something extremely strong. Also, enable two-factor authentication if you haven’t already done so. With these changes, hackers would need both your password and your phone to get into your Yahoo account.

You want to keep control of your Yahoo account, even if you don’t actively use it. The reason is that abandoned account names are recycled by Yahoo. A bad guy could appropriate your old Yahoo handle and impersonate you. So don’t delete your Yahoo account, just lock it up for now.

 You should also disconnect any external services that are connected to your Yahoo account. To do this, from your Yahoo inbox page, click on the gear icon (upper-right), then on Settings. Click on Accounts to see all of the email accounts, social networks, cloud services, and other services connected to your Yahoo account. Go down the list and disconnect each one. This will eliminate your Yahoo account as a bad guy’s conduit to your other accounts.

Finally, if you have been using your Yahoo password on any other services, change those passwords. And stop re-using passwords — every account should have its own, unique, and strong password.

First, create a Google account if you don’t already have one. You can sign up here.

Just like Yahoo’s inbox page, the Gmail inbox page has a gear icon in the upper-right corner. Click on it and then click Settings. Next, click Accounts and Import, then click Import Mail and Contacts. Enter your Yahoo address (include the @yahoo.com part), press Continue, then click Agree to give the app permission to access your Yahoo account.

Next, select the import options you want: import contacts, import existing mail, and/or import new Yahoo mail for the next 30 days. Finally, click Start Import.

It may take a couple of days for Google to import all of your Yahoo mail, if your Yahoo inbox is very full. Another consideration is that Google only imports the mail that’s in your inbox, not drafts, sent email, or email saved in other folders. To import such items, you will need to manually move them to your Yahoo inbox, then let Google import them. To check the status of your import, look under Settings > Accounts and Import.

Google assigns a label to each imported email; it is your Yahoo username. If you want to recreate the folders you had on Yahoo, you can import what’s in your Yahoo inbox, then delete the Yahoo inbox’s contents. Rename the new Gmail label to Yahoo-Inbox. Move the next folder’s contents to the Yahoo inbox and import to Google again. Rename the Gmail label to match the Yahoo folder name, and repeat for each folder. It’s tedious, but it works.

Are you still using Yahoo Mail? Do you have a plan to switch to Gmail or another webmail service?It’s time to really rethink your options before it’s too late.

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Have a great week

Deuce Marjeta and the ZI Staff.