In response to customer protests, Yahoo announced this week that they were extending YahooGroups del

In response to customer protests, Yahoo announced this week that they were extending YahooGroups deletion deadline to Jan 31, 2020.   However, this extension is misleading customers into believing that all of their user data will still be available to them after Dec 14. It won’t.  The sample letter below explains why. Please send a copy to Verizon shareholdersand Verizon’sexecutive team (links to both).. And don’t forget to cc Boing Boing,@cnet,Ars Technica, US News,@npr, PC Magazine, The Verge, and Business Insider (if you are tweeting you can just include a link to this tumblr post or this Google Doc)

“I want to know why Verizon is not only deleting user content (Yahoo Groups!), but is actively preventing users and archivists from accessing and preserving their own data. Verizon’s own download tools are broken and inadequate and do not provide complete data. Photos and some files are not offered as part of the download.  This illustrates poor business practices on the part of Verizon and a complete lack of core technical competency. Verizon is now claiming they are offering an extension, but only for these broken data tools. They are telling members of Mom parenting groups that they have less than 5 days to download thousands of photos, one by one. They are forcing genealogy groups to  manually save gigabytes of church records, cemetery maps, and precious diaries. And they are making customers across the world salvage sewing manuals, astronomy data, and medical research through the most low tech means. Why? 

Because Verizon’s own “GetMyData” download tool will  not save user photos and files and on December 14, access the YahooGroups! website will be shut down. There are third party tools that will save this customer data, but Verizon has blocked them and will not allow them to be used after Dec 14.   Please extend website access and the use of third party download tools to Jan 31, 2020 to allow moderators and members sufficient time to access and download their own data. Verizon has set the building on fire but is telling owners they can only carry their possessions out, one by one. Even worse, Verizon is blocking the firefighters from helping. What kind of tech company refuses to protect customer data?   And refuses to hand it over, instead making customers crawl for each digital morsel? “