Adblock users are reportedly prevented from accessing Yahoo Mail. One Adblock user decided to open a complaint thread on Adblock Plus forums. In addition to that, the thread starter mentioned in the thread that two other Yahoo Mail users were also facing similar problems.
A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed this situation and told reporters at Engadget that “Yahoo is continuously developing and testing new product experiences. This (prevention) is a test that Yahoo is currently conducting to a small majority of Yahoo Mail users in the US”. Interestingly, Andrei Herasimchuk – once helped to reconstruct Yahoo Mail – was also prevented from accessing Yahoo Mail as a result of using an ad blocker.
So @YahooMail has blocked my inbox for using an ad blocker. It was a good run, I guess. Goodbye! Hello Apple Mail, as much as I hate it.
— Andrei Herasimchuk (@Trenti) November 19, 2015
According to Mozilla’s statistics for Adblock Plus, the add-on for its browser has been downloaded over 317 million times with more than 5.7 million in the past 30 days alone. Bare in mind that the statistic does not show the number of downloads outside Firefox. If Yahoo was to implement this prevention worldwide soon, a plethora of its users will be affected and it may lead to a decrease in Yahoo Mail users.
Fortunately, there has been no reports of users outside of the US facing similar issue. However, it is worth reflecting on how big the online advertising industry really is, which is estimated to be around US$60 billion (about RM257 billion). With an industry that big, there are bound to be several online-based companies and websites that will rely solely on advertising as a source of revenue. This could explain why Yahoo is testing such prevention.
(Source: Engadget, Adblock Plus Forums)
