If you use yahoo messenger for years now, you have been able see/chat your contacts from the online yahoo email .. turn it on or off is easy. They have a new faster beta version now.. it loads in a blink... I've use it for a while now... it looks almost the same as the old and modern yahoo mail. Just slight differences... and faster.

Partymusic, sorry, I don't have experience with Yahoo, but I want to address Lars' complaint about Gmail. Lars, in Gmail you need to "label" any messages you want to save, and then Gmail will make folders for you. The icon for "label" is in the row at the top, to the left of "more." You can label the message multiple times (for example, by names of correspondents or by subject ... whatever you wish; you can also nest subtopics under main topics). The message will remain in your inbox until you decide to "archive" it (in the row at the top, it is the first icon on the left, a down-arrow). When it's archived, it will disappear from your inbox, but you will see a list of labels (i.e., email correspondents or topics) on the left, and you can click and view it again. So the list of labels/correspondents is really a list of "folders." Sue

FYI.... A very short time ago, a friend of mine was a victim of this particular hack at Yahoo. I was listed in her contact list and all I can say is that this "nasty" is virulent. I don't use any Yahoo product and rarely, if ever visit their website. She is the only email friend I have that uses their email and even though we don't converse on a daily basis, just being one of her contacts made me a victim. I began to be barraged with unsavory mail...none of which I opened directly. But, no matter what protection I have on my system [and it's the best] I could not stop the onslaught. I suspect the reason being that I was not the addressee. The clever sender copied me rather than sending directly to my address. I tried every trick I knew to stop the mail...blocking IP #s, etc and nothing worked. My only recourse to stop the action was to delete my own email account entirely and begin a new. I'd had the account for sixteen years with nary a problem. Deleting it felt like loosing an old friend. Then I advised my friend to find another email program. Unfortunately, she didn't heed my advice and I expect she's been hit again. I insisted that she not put my new email address in her contact list so I may be safe this time around...but if not...the account I opened to continue conversing with her is what I consider a throw away account. I won't suffer if I have to close it quickly. Although...when I opened the new account to continue conversing with her...I made her promise not to list me as a contact anywhere on her system. I relate this experience for those of you...who like Jodi...are having difficulty resetting a password...and strongly suggest that you find new non-Yahoo email programs. As the unwitting recipient of my friends computer infection...I had to change all my accounts, etc and it's a task I wouldn't want to repeat. Anne

I think some of you are overstating the case. As I understand it, it's a software driven context review for ad placement and nothing more. It's the same as Google or any other search engine does when you do a search (look how the ads magically bear some connection to your search term and your location). It's what Gardenweb does when you're reading forums, the pages show ads triggered off of key words. You can't stop the machine analysis but if you don't like the ads, tack an ad-blocker on your browser. There's no geek with thick glasses reading your nasty email to your sister. There may be other things in the world invading your privacy but I don't think this is anything to worry about.