Gawker: valleywag, yahoo mail

Did Sarah Palin destroy Yahoo Mail evidence?

Owen Thomas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Alaska governor Sarah Palin may be in even hotter water over a Yahoo Mail account she used to conduct state business. One can hardly blame her for using Yahoo Mail, gov.sarah@yahoo.com, to handle official state business. Everyone loves to complain about the email provided by one's employer, and evade it when can. But for a state official, now a vice-presidential candidate, the practice was always questionable. Yahoo Mail is not archived as scrupulously as official state email accounts, which are covered by laws requiring the retention of government records. And her advisors specifically discussed using Yahoo Mail to evade archiving requirements. Here's where things just got worse: Palin, according to a discussion on /b/, an Internet messaging board frequented by online troublemakers, used a second account, gov.palin@yahoo.com, whose password users of the board say they hacked. Emails, allegedly Palin's, are now circulating on the Net. The whole thing could be a prank. But both accounts are now gone — which raises a much more serious issue.

In the aftermath of the supposed hacking, someone deleted both the gov.palin@yahoo.com and gov.sarah@yahoo.com accounts. Emails sent from Palin's Yahoo account made up part of a government inquiry into the firing of a state police commissioner; deleting the account would wipe out any emails investigators haven't already obtained. Could this be considered obstruction of justice?

(Original photo by jmedkeffphoto)

Email startup tries to hurry Microsoft-Yahoo merger

Owen Thomas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:40:00 EDT

Former Yahoo executive Jeff Bonforte, now CEO of Xobni, has come up with possibly the most cynical yet useful product ever launched by a startup. Xobni, whose software tracks and analyzes email usage in Outlook, is rumored to be in acquisition talks with Microsoft. Microsoft is, to its dismay, not in acquisition talks with Yahoo. But Xobni's latest product, TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld reports, bridges Microsoft Outlook, desktop email software widely used in corporations, with Yahoo's Web-based email. "That's the kind of demo that gets deals done," Schonfeld observes. Indeed, it may make Microsoft wonder whether they need to buy Yahoo at all.

Yahoo Mail plagued by bugs

Chris Mohney — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:00:32 EDT

Yahoo Mail has been screwed up or down altogether since this weekend, causing "anguished cries" from the Bay Area according to one tipster. Apparently local nerds are being unfairly denied their Craigslist responses. Widepsread and ongoing problems — dating back weeks or months, as noted in some reports — are blamed on Java conflicts, the buggy beta version of Yahoo Mail, and rotten server farms. Also solar flares and malicious pixies.