Yahoo Mail is Censoring Emails About #OccupyWallStreet (UPDATE: Yahoo responds)

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 9:29 PM on September 19, 2011 in Commentary. 3 Comments Tags: censorship, lolwut, occupy wall street, yahoo. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/kf

Any time you try to send an email from Yahoo Mail with the text string “occupywallst.org” in it, it will be blocked from being sent due to “suspicious activity”.

What.

I first heard about this from this post, and as you can see in the video, I can confirm that it is, indeed, happening. David, our Chief Operating Plankhead, also confirms that this is happening from his Yahoo account.

UPDATE: Another good example courtesy of slybster. This one’s a bit clearer:

UPDATE 9/20 2:56 PM EST: @Yahoo tweeted:

Thanks to @YahooMail users & @ThinkProgress for catching problem w/ #Occupywallst.org mail. Prob is fixed, but there may be residual delays.

I figured it would end up being explained as a bug. But that’s a really weird bug. I think we need more of an explanation, Yahoo.

Mike Arends

whoa, I tried it and got the same thing. That is messed up
Ali

i read on cryptome a while back about how yahoo gave the pd a fact sheet of ways yahoo will work with them. wonder if you’ve been flagged as well as blocked…

http://plankhead.com Zacqary Adam Green

Fortunately, my Yahoo account isn’t my primary email address at all. It’s something I happened to have lying around, so I decided to test it.

And I’ve done plenty of things that would be more likely to get me flagged by a government agency than typing a little bit of text into an email, so I wouldn’t worry any more about that.

Yahoo Mail is Censoring Emails About #OccupyWallStreet (UPDATE: Yahoo responds)

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