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Why is Yahoo Mail behind in security? They don't support HTTPS yet. Gmail and many others do. I'm shocked that Yahoo still doesn't have HTTPS. Why is this? What is the logic behind not supporting HTTPS in their mail client?

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Yahoo Mail is way behind; after all these years they still do not support right-to-left properly. – Itamar May 1 '11 at 8:47

migrated from superuser.com May 1 '11 at 5:20

5 Answers

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What is the logic behind not supporting HTTPS in their mail client?

The encryption takes CPU time, which means more and/or bigger servers, which cost more money. Supporting HTTPS may also require a more complex infrastructure for load balancing and caching. Since most users don't care much about security, I guess Yahoo decided that it's not worth the investment.

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Ahhhhh this might just be the logic behind it! – Daniel Dec 16 '09 at 4:43
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Yahoo! Mail does support HTTPS. See details here.

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Are you sure it stays in https after login? I don't have Yahoo mail account so I can't check. – harrymc Dec 8 '09 at 20:49
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The login page is under https, but it's regular old http after you log in. – Chris Dwyer Dec 8 '09 at 21:04
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There is some javascript, however, on the after log in page that does access https URLs... so maybe its AJAX e-mail retrieval is https. – Chris Dwyer Dec 8 '09 at 21:06
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When logging in it is secure but once in it isn't. – Daniel Dec 16 '09 at 4:44
up vote 1 down vote

Here is an link to an article from 2008 when Yahoo had released SSL support, then rolled it back:

http://www.tmcnet.com/news/2008/06/12/3494864.htm

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I think that article is about supporting SSL for POP acces, while the question seems to be about the web frontend. – Michael Borgwardt Dec 9 '09 at 11:09
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Update 20/12/2012: This option is now available. To turn it on, follow the steps below:

  1. Click on the cog wheel in the upper-right corner (in the new version), or on Options in the upper-left side (in the old version)
  2. Click on Mail Options
    enter image description here
  3. Look at the bottom of the page for Turn on SSL: and check the box next to it
    enter image description here
  4. Click on the Save button in the upper side of the page.

After login, if you just add the "s" in the URL (http:// -> https://), it will just work. (See the image below.)

enter image description here

But you can't access Yahoo Messenger (the web version), Facebook Friends, and Applications if you are on HTTPS. These are now accessible (30/04/2012).

With HTTPS:                 Without HTTPS:

enter image description here enter image description here

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I can access all those things in https. – Derek 朕會功夫 Apr 30 '12 at 5:28
@Derek Yeah, true, for about a week I can access them as well. – Alex Apr 30 '12 at 5:33
up vote 0 down vote

I believe they are now rolling this out with the recent redesign. Go to Options -> Mail Options and click "Turn on SSL" Take a look at these two request pages that are tracking it: getsatisfaction.com, suggestions.yahoo.com

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Perhaps you can highlight some things, like: it's not rolled out like Gmail, not always available and stuff like that. – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 20 '12 at 18:52
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Well there's not a lot of information out there at the minute to be honest. A search turns up the official Yahoo! help page SLN 8558 'How to turn on SSL' but that seems to have been pulled. I've managed to find one cached url that shows the page though. – Daniel Dec 20 '12 at 23:06
Now you've done some research !! Perhaps you can add it and improve your answer. – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Dec 21 '12 at 7:14

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