Yahoo Mail App Becomes A "Free For All" Email Client

Let's face it. Having a Yahoo email address these days is seen as a stigma and a liability. Aside from being "old", recent revelations have called into question the security of having a Yahoo account. As such, it won't be surprising if Yahoo experienced a mass exodus of users trying to protect themselves from hacks and massive leaks. Attempting to keep its email app from descending into obsolescence, Yahoo is now removing the requirement to have a Yahoo account to use its Yahoo Mail app, potentially turning it into something akin to a third-party email client like K-9, Boxer, CloudMagic and the like.

Yahoo has long opened its Yahoo Mail app to other email accounts, allowing you to use it as the single gateway for Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, AOL, and even Exchange email accounts. However, before you could even add those non-Yahoo accounts, you needed to still sign in with your Yahoo account. It just allowed you to add other accounts on top of your Yahoo account.

This latest announcement does away with that final requirement. Now you can simply open the Android or iOS app, tap your email provider, and you're good to go. Of course, Yahoo would prefer if you also used your Yahoo Mail account, but it'll take what it can.

But why would you want to use Yahoo Mail as your all-in-one email client? Yahoo thinks it has strong answers for that. The app has features like getting notifications only from an individual instead of for every email, including automated ones from companies and newsletters. It also offers some level of personalization via themes. Some features, like customizable swipe gestures and multiple mailbox management, are already present in many other email clients.

Of course, there are equally strong reasons not to use the app as your single hub for emails. Yahoo has proven itself rather weak when it comes to securing its own users data. Privacy and security are now known to be not its forte, and those are exactly the two most important things as far as emails are concerned.

SOURCE: Yahoo