I joined a yahoo group the other day, and I noticed that when Yahoo! shows my member information, it says I am three years younger than I am. "No problem" I thought to myself, "I'll just edit my information, surely I put in the wrong birthday."

I went into the member section, and (after giving them my password for the second time in two minutes) found where my birthday was listed as "on file." I clicked the edit button for that section, and in the resulting page, it again said that my birthday was "on file." It did not give me a way to change it.

Wondering how to change it, I decided to try the help tool. I searched for "change birthday," which gave me the response:

Q: Why can't I change my birthdate, and why does it say, "on file"?
A: We use your birthdate as a security measure in case you forget your password. We would not be able to do so if you were able to change it.

Great. Good work guys.

The lesson is this: Yahoo! doesn't use encryption on their webmail. I'll repeat that: YAHOO! DOESN'T USE ENCRYPTION ON THEIR WEBMAIL!

I'm nothing short of shocked. I could have sworn that Yahoo! was a $26B company. Surely, SURELY they, of all people would see the importance and value of secure email, right? Nope.

They've been offering free email since at least April of 1996 when they had their IPO. Somehow in the last 12 years they never secured the damned thing? What?

Note below the conspicuous use of http rather than https: