Will the Real Matt Refghi Please Stand Up?
Back in mid 2009, I discovered an unexpected shipping confirmation in my e-mail inbox. It was sent from my cellphone service provider, and was letting me know that the iPhone I ordered had been sent out to me. Thing is, I never ordered an iPhone, and though the confirmation showed my name, it was being shipped to another address, and was associated with another phone number. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was identity theft.
Photo by Ken Banks, kiwanja.net.
I immediately called my provider, and realized that I would likely have problems authenticating with them. You see, the provider usually asked for two key items whenever I called: birth date, and postal code. Anticipating this, I first told the agent the situation, and he confirmed that the address and contact information on my account had been changed. Since I had the thief’s information as well, I was able to prove that I was legitimate, and the agent told me I’d have to call the fraud department, which was currently closed.
As a next step, I returned to the confirmation e-mail, and took note of the shipping information in there. It was being shipped by one specific package delivery company, and I had a tracking number. Seeing as it was late, I couldn’t call their hotline for help. Instead, I went ahead and sent an e-mail to their support, warning them that the package should not be delivered, as it was fraudulent. I realized that I would likely not hear back from them that night, but at least I knew I did something while waiting for the hotline to open the next morning.
The next day, I called my cell phone provider first, and spoke with their fraud department. From what they could tell, the thief simply managed to authenticate as me, providing my birth date and postal code. He then had them change the address and phone number on my account, likely after telling them he had moved. As a means of protecting my account from further break-ins, the provider offered to set up a password. I naturally agreed to this, but wondered why it wasn’t active by default.
Next in line was the delivery company, which I managed to reach by phone. The agent mentioned that the package was already in transit, and that she would notify the driver to abort the delivery. She seemed fairly confident that this would occur, so I was in a good position by the end of the call. Keep in mind, though, that I probably didn’t need to worry about the delivery, as the provider likely had insurance for such situations. My pursuit, at that point, was mainly for personal reasons – if I could stop the thief from succeeding, I would be much more satisfied.
Photo by KDavidClark.
Soon after completing the calls, I arrived at work, and told my boss the story. He naturally allowed me to deal with it from the office, rather than work. Since I had spoken to the delivery company and my cell phone provider, the next step was to call the police. I explained my story, and the officer told me someone would call me back to discuss it further. In the meantime, her advice was that I should activate a fraud alert on my credit line, which I went ahead and did immediately after the call. The alert would prevent anything from being charged to my name, effectively making a social security number a requirement in all large credit purchases. After activating the alerts, I went back to my desk, and tried to piece together how exactly I had been compromised. Within a few minutes, I had my answer.
To find my postal code, the thief probably just ran a WHOIS against my domain. At the time, I had multiple domains, and each one had been registered using my full name, address, and phone number. Domain registrations are public records, and though it’s a security concern, the contact information is needed to prove ownership. While this isn’t immediately visible to everyone, with the right tools, one can access that information. As an example, visit this website, and enter “microsoft.com” in the WHOIS box. Press “WHOIS >>” when ready, and then scroll down to see the registration information. There are hosts that offer private registration, usually for an additional fee, but at the time, my host didn’t have the option.
Now, on the other hand, my birth date was a little less straight-forward. It was a coworker who initially found that my Amazon wishlist was available to the public, and it revealed my birth day and month. While the year wasn’t actually revealed, there are many sites where my current age is displayed. With that, the year can be deduced, and there you have it – the date of my birth, cracked.
With the security holes revealed, I decided to correct the easiest one – I disabled my Amazon wishlist. The domain problem would have to be addressed later, as it would likely require changing hosts, which was not a quick task. My next goal was to find out as much as I could about the thief, as I had his address and phone number. After some googling, I located the Facebook profile of the supposed culprit, which of course included his name. Unfortunately, I couldn’t determine if he was the actual thief, or a scapegoat, so I couldn’t act on this knowledge. The actual thief could simply have given that address with the intention of being there just in time to grab the delivery. So, instead of acting on it, I took notes, and awaited the police phone call.
Photo by Tim Pierce.
A few minutes later, I got word from the delivery company – they had successfully blocked the package, and it was being returned to the sender. With this news, I knew that I had blocked the thief – it was now simply a matter of bringing down the hammer of justice. Soon after, the police called back, and I explained my story once more. To my surprise, I was told that there was nothing they could do to locate the individual, despite the information I had collected. Apparently, the scam was fairly common, and the person doing it was most likely not the one at the address. The officer then explained that it would have been a different story if I hadn’t successfully blocked the delivery. Even then, I was told it would have taken the police department ONE YEAR to investigate such a theft. I left the call feeling less respect for the police, and seriously considered taking a vigilante approach.
Despite my disappointment in the police, the problem had been mostly resolved. I successfully prevented the thief from getting anything, and my accounts were now all protected. I had called all companies I did business with, and had them activate all optional security measures.
Two weeks after the incident, I received yet another e-mail, notifying me that my password had been reset on my account. I once again called my cellphone provider’s fraud department, and they helped me piece together what happened. The thief probably noticed he hadn’t received the iPhone, and tried to get that corrected by going to a store in person. When he couldn’t figure out the password that was being asked of him, he likely claimed he had forgotten it, and had the agent reset it. Since my account had the correct contact information, the new password was sent to my e-mail address. Since he couldn’t get into the account, and couldn’t check my e-mail, he was officially stuck, and the conflict finally came to an end…. I had won.
However stressful, the whole experience proved instrumental in improving my security on the web. No longer could I just casually open accounts everywhere, worry-free. I now had to be very conscious of how websites intended to use my data, otherwise, I could be leaving bits of information for thieves to exploit. I once wrote an article that explains how I would google my own e-mail address to see if it was visible to spammers. Well, the same approach can be used for other things – you can google your name, address, phone number, and see if it is exposed anywhere. Keeping in mind, of course, that after searching for anything sensitive, you should probably wipe your browser history, as well as your Google Web History, if you have that activated.
Beyond making sure that websites don’t expose too much information about me, I also try to avoid being specific in my posts. You likely noticed that I never mentioned who my cellphone provider was, and who the package delivery company was. I do this to make sure I’m not giving away details that can be used against me. I also exclude certain facts from my posts so that if my identity is ever in question, I have unique information that can set me apart from the thief. I do something similar with the images that I upload to this blog – if I spot anything even remotely sensitive, I’ll cover it up.
So, that’s my story, folks – hopefully my experience will prove useful in preventing similar attempts on others.
Detained While Reporting Spam in Livemocha
Ah, yes, Livemocha. If you haven’t heard, Livemocha is a site that allows you to learn languages with the help of a community. While it does offer exercises and quizzes that are similar to Rosetta Stone, the most powerful feature is the fact that other users review your submissions. That alone is worthy of a recommendation, so check it out if you haven’t already. The community support goes a long way towards motivating a person, and also ensures only native speakers of a language are the ones reviewing. This idea is a very powerful one, but unfortunately, the interface that they offer – the website – is flawed in many ways. Today, I’d like to share my experiences with one of these flaws, which, in my opinion, is a major usability issue.
Consider this Livemocha e-mail notification:
Alright, so “maxwevictor96″ sent me a message. The name is a bit weird, so I’m pretty sure it is spam – but there’s no way for me to read the message content from the inbox. If I click on the link, I’m forced to log into Livemocha before I’m allowed to see the content. Seeing as Livemocha also offers paid learning services, I can see why they might want us to log in as often as possible. After all, the more time we spend on the site, the more time we have to consider paying for advanced services. Of course, I’m just speculating – it’s possible they didn’t intentionally design it with that in mind.
Anyway, provided I do log in, I’m brought to the message:
So, yeah, definitely spam, and it’s up to me to either flag it, or ignore it completely. In an effort to improve the services that I use, I usually go out of my way to flag spam. Notice the Report abuse button on the left? Seems clear enough, so let’s click that.
A gray overlay appears over the site, and after about 2 seconds of loading, the above dialog appears. So far, I can’t really complain – apart from the long load time. The form seems pretty standard, so I select Spam from the Category dropdown, and click Submit.
Instead of the dialog disappearing, an error message appears, telling me that the “Message cannot be blank“. Apparently, saying the e-mail is spam is not enough. I actually have to type something in the comments box… but what do they want me to enter at this point? The first few times, I wrote “This is spam”, what else do they expect? Seems to me that the form should not require comments if you’re simply flagging spam. After doing this on many separate occasions, and cursing at the unknown designer that came up with this process, I actually caught myself adding random characters to the Comments textbox, just so I could submit quickly. In other words, I spammed the report spam feature, to save time - all because of this bizarre design choice. It reminds me of the Windows Server 2003 dialog that appears whenever you boot, where you have to explain why the machine was taken offline. Sure, it can be useful in specific environments, but for a simple test machine – I really don’t care when it goes offline, so I learned to enter random garbage into that textbox just to get past it. Funny how design choices can turn well-intentioned users into annoyed pseudo-spammers.
Anyway, provided you spend time entering something in the comments box, you can successfully click Submit. Then, this message appears:
"Thanks for helping us keep Livemocha clean. Your Abuse Report has been submitted successfully. (This form will close automatically in 5 seconds.)"
I get thanked for keeping Livemocha clean, and it tells me my report has been submitted successfully. Okay, fine – then I’m told the dialog will disappear in 5 seconds, so I don’t need to do anything. They offer a small close button, but it’s far enough away from where my mouse cursor is (after clicking Submit) that I never actually felt like it was worth it to try and close the window early. If at least they would count clicks outside the dialog, I could hide it immediately by clicking the gray zone. But no, instead, I’m subject to time-limited target practice – if I can click the little Close button quick enough, I can save maybe 2-3 seconds. That, or sit idly and let the 5 seconds elapse – after all, once you’ve read the message one time, there’s really no value in re-reading it.
So why do you feel the need to waste my time, Livemocha? I lose 2 seconds waiting for the dialog to appear, then I have to select Spam, enter redundant information in the comments box, click Submit, and then wait 5 more seconds. I have a suggestion, guys – how about a Report Spam button with no questions asked?
Update: I posted a feature request on LiveMocha’s feedback site.
Distraction-Free Writing in WordPress 3.2
As a fan of WordPress, as soon as 3.2 was released, I found myself reading the changelog. While doing so, I noticed a very intriguing feature addition:
Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release
Zen mode? Distraction-free writing? Sounded good, so I proceeded to update all my WordPress installations. To fully impress upon you how significant of a feature it is, here’s what the typical WordPress WYSIWYG editor looks like:
It’s a full-featured page, that’s for sure – but it also has quite a lot of controls surrounding it. The text editor itself loses some screen space to these controls, even vertically – requiring a scrollbar. I often find myself resizing the editor by dragging the bottom right corner, until I have the maximum vertical space available to me. While this works, WordPress does not actually remember my preferences, forcing me to manually resize whenever I’m working on a post.
Now, with all that said, take a look at full-screen mode:
Full-screen mode is a highly simplified version of the regular WordPress editor. All you really have is the toolbar at the top, subtle outlines of your title and content sections, and a lot of free space.
Then, two seconds later:
The controls disappear, making it so only the content is visible. When this originally happened, it was a bit of a shock to me, as I realized that having the full WordPress interface around the content (as I typed) gave me some re-assurance. It kept telling me when it auto-saved, the word count, stuff like that. But in this new mode, I seemed to be on my own – what if I accidentally navigated away? I barely felt like I was in WordPress anymore – it almost looked like completely different application. It’s at this point that I tweeted a message to @wordpress:
@wordpress Good job guys, I really like the new dashboard design. Full-screen editor will take some getting used to, though – but it’s nice.
After writing that, I stepped away from the editor, and only returned to it a few days later – when it was time to write a blog post. It’s at that point that began to see how useful it was. The toolbar appears whenever you hover your mouse towards the top of the page, no matter how much you’ve scrolled. The same cannot be said about the regular editing mode, so this is a definite improvement. If I accidentally press Back in my browser, I get the usual warning that I might lose information – and I can cancel it. So, there’s really no need to worry about navigating away.
The other features I mentioned, namely, the auto-saving and the word count, are still accessible from this new editor. You can save whenever you want by making the toolbar appear, and click Save. I’m not sure it actually saves automatically, but I find it instinctual to save manually, so at least for now, this isn’t a problem. The word count can be found at the bottom of the page, right after the content. It’s at that location that you can also see a slogan, which says, quite simply, “Just write.” I really like this, as I feel it truly sums up the spirit of this new feature – it is meant to block out all excess interface noise, and let you write, distraction-free.
At this point in time, I exclusively use the full-screen editor when working on my posts. It’s a very refreshing feeling, having just my content to work with – and I commend the WordPress devs for adding such a feature.
No More Canned Responses, Please.
Back in 2007, my MattRefghi.com domain served primarily to power my solo development experiments. Behind the scenes, it was hosted by 1&1 Internet – the price was low, which was necessary at the time. All was well in the world of 1&1 web hosting for a while, until I eventually encountered a problem when uploading PHP files to my server. When I ran the files on MattRefghi.com, they would fail – but on my local development machine, everything was working as expected.
Eventually I called their tech support team to see if something was wrong with their configuration. The agent helped me resolve the problem, but in the process of doing so, he started modifying my PHP files – without even asking me. During the call, I didn’t really think much of it, particularly since the code I had uploaded wasn’t very important to me. Ultimately, the agent’s PHP tampering helped me figure out the problem; however, after the call, I realized that his behavior was a very big concern. Had my source code actually been important, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to get their eyes on it, let alone edit it. After a while, I contacted 1&1 to report the encounter, and express my concern in their practices. The agent that received my report was sympathetic, and assured me it wouldn’t happen again:
The issue that you reported is actually beyond the rules of 1and1
already and as tech support, we are not allowed to alter anything from
the customer’s files or account. We can assure you that if anything
like this will happen again, we will take further measures. That is
generally the reason why we do not support scripting issues. I would
like to apologize for this issue.
However, it still marked the end of my business with 1&1 – I couldn’t risk my code being comprised. Apology or not, their hiring practices produced at least one agent with insufficient training.
Seeking more stability and a trustworthy host, I went ahead and signed up with Yahoo Web Hosting. It was more expensive, but it had something important – a big name I felt I could trust. Surely, Yahoo would have better practices, and I would be safe to code away as I always had. To be fair, this was the case – I never felt my security was at stake when I was with Yahoo. I instead encountered a different type of problem: I couldn’t figure out how to map multiple domains in such a way that they all used my MattRefghi.com web hosting, without revealing that to the end-user. After multiple attempts at solving the issue on my own, I decided I would e-mail their support team, and see if they would be able to help.
Below is one of the most frustrating conversations I’ve ever had with a support team, to the point where I felt the need to describe my problem as if it were meant for a child to understand. Before we get started, I want to highlight that there are many long e-mails included in this post – some are offered as text, others as images (to preserve formatting). Typically, whenever I show a Yahoo e-mail, feel free to read the first couple paragraphs, and then skim through the rest. Now that you’ve been warned, here’s the first e-mail I sent to Yahoo:
When I originally signed up for web hosting with Yahoo, I only bought the domain: ‘mattrefghi.com’. At that time, this was all I needed. I now have my blog hosted by Yahoo (WordPress), which is in a ‘blog’ subfolder – I see this when I’m connected via FTP.
To access my blog, I can use the following address:
http://www.mattrefghi.com/blog/I currently have it set up so that when I type ‘http://www.mattrefghi.com/’, it brings me to a page that says:
‘mattrefghi.com is currently experiencing difficulties – come back later.’ (I added this page just for testing).
Adding ‘blog’ to the URL, and pressing enter, brings me to my blog.This is great… all working as expected.
Thing is, I have two other domains: ‘.com’ and ‘refghi.org’.
When I forward ‘chameleoncore.com’ to point to ‘mattrefghi.com’ using masking, I get the page I expect:
‘mattrefghi.com is currently experiencing difficulties – come back later.’
…and ‘chameleoncore.com’ is in the address bar. Great.
Now… if I add ‘blog’ to this URL, it throws me back to the same page, but keeps the ‘blog’ in the address bar. Huh?
I can even put some random junk in there and it still keeps it and throws me back to the ‘technical difficulties’ page.
This isn’t what I want.Ideally, I’d like to be able to do the following:
Create a folder called ‘chameleoncore’ via FTP, such that typing ‘www.chameleoncore.com’ will bring me to the ‘chameleoncore’ folder by default.
If the ‘chameleoncore’ folder has a subfolder (ex: ‘projects’) on the FTP server, I want to be able to access that subfolder via the following URL:http://www.chameleoncore.com/projects/
…while ALWAYS reflecting the current directory.
I realize this would work fine if I had chameleoncore.com as my main web hosting domain – but how can I accomplish this in my situation. When I signed up, I just bought mattrefghi.com, not knowing what my business name would be. I still don’t have that name, but the ‘chameleoncore.com’ name is somewhat related, so I wanted to try setting up the site using that domain.
Any help in this matter would be appreciated.
- Matt Refghi
As you can see, I provided a wealth of information to assist the support agent. I thought it would help ensure that my problem got solved quickly.
Hello Matt,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Web Hosting.
I understand that you want to forward your domain ‘chameleoncore.com’ to
a sub directory in your ‘mattrefghi.com’ account.Mathieu, I greatly appreciate that you have forwarded your concern to us
and given me a chance to assist you with this matter.To create a subdomain, you must already have at least one subdirectory
created in your Yahoo! Web Hosting File Manager.To create a subdirectory:
1. Sign into your Yahoo! Web Hosting account.
2. Click on the “Manage” tab.
3. Click on the “File Manager” link in the “Tools for Managing Your
Site” section.
4. Click on the “Create Subdirectory” link.To create a subdomain:
1. Sign in to your Yahoo! Web Hosting account.
2. Click on the “Manage” tab.
3. Locate the “Web Hosting Account Details” section.
4. Locate “Subdomains”
5. Click the “Manage” link
6. Click on the “Create Subdomain” button.
7. Type in the subdomain you would like.
8. Select the subdirectory you would like your subdomain to be
associated with, then click the “Submit” button.Now when you type in your subdomain, the index file inside of the
associated subdirectory will be automatically loaded into your browser.For more information on subdomains, please see:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/webhosting/subdomains/
You can set up domain forwarding from the Domain Control Panel.
1. Log into your Yahoo! Domains account with your Yahoo! ID and password
by clicking on the “Sign In” link at the the top of the page:http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
2. Click the “My Services” tab, then click on the Domain Control Panel
for the account you wish to edit.3. Click the “Forward your Domain” link.
4. Click the “Create Forward” button.
To set up masked domain forwarding to any URL:
5. Select the “the web site at” option.
6. Enter the URL of the site to which you wish to forward your domain.
Select the masked forwarding option and click the “Submit” button.7. Do one of the following:
* Select the option to include keywords and enter your keywords
separated by commas in the field provided.* Select the option to not include keywords. (You can always come back
and add them later.8. Click the “Continue” or “Submit” button.
9. Click the “Return to Domain Forward Page” button.
Regardless of which option you choose, your domain forward will appear
listed along with the details. Keep in mind that it may take up to 30
minutes for your domain forwarding to take effect during which visitors
will see the original domain and not be forwarded.We believe this solution should resolve your issue, if it still
persists, please call us at 1-866-800-8092.Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.
Regards,
Bradley
Yahoo! Customer Care
For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:
Their initial response started with an assumption – the agent, Bradley, felt he understood my problem, and provided me with lots of information about the solution. I have to admit, the instructions provided were very clear, but the e-mail, as a whole, felt like a giant form letter - and more importantly, his assumption was incorrect. He did not correctly understand my problem, and I didn’t blame him for that – it was a tricky problem to describe. In response to this, I decided I’d write my reply as clearly as possible, while illustrating how his solution didn’t work.
After writing that e-mail, I was pretty confident they would understand what I was saying. I spent a lot of time on the formatting, making it clear beyond a doubt, and then even added color coding and smileys to convey what worked, and what didn’t. The smiley part made me laugh, but I figured if was going for clarity – I might as well crank it up to 11.
Hello Mathieu,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Web Hosting.
I understand that wish to hide your Yahoo! Web Hosting account domain
name “mattrefghi.com” from your website URLs.I greatly appreciate that you not only forwarded your concern but also
shared your thoughts about the feature you’re requesting.Mathieu, I regret that this feature is not available through Yahoo! Web
Hosting. Also, we do not have an estimated date as to when it will be
available. Currently, the feature which you wish to have is available
through URL rewrite function, unfortunately not supported by Yahoo! Web
Hosting.We are always looking for ways to make Yahoo! Web Hosting more useful to
our users and continually receive lot of great feedback. It is through
these comments and suggestions that we are able to make improvements.We will be sure to keep your concern in mind to improve our service.
Moreover, I’ve also passed your comments on to our development team for
further consideration. We always have something on the drawing board,
and many of our best new features have been suggested directly by users
like you.You can also forward your precious suggestions to us at the following
address:hosting-suggestions@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Your cooperation and patience will be highly appreciated in this regard.
We value you as a customer and look forward to serving you for years to
come.Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.
Have a nice day!
Regards,
Maggy
Yahoo! Customer Care
For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:
Despite the clear formatting, color-coding, and smileys – another Yahoo agent (Maggy) replied, wielding her own incorrect assumption. Now, it’s the approach I have a problem with – I wouldn’t mind her being wrong if she expressed her uncertainty somewhere in the e-mail. If you, the support agent, are not entirely sure that you are providing me with THE solution, don’t act like you are. Instead, she behaves as if it will solve my problem, and leaves it to the form letter to tell me I can reply, if I need further assistance.
So I reply again, and you can tell my patience is low by the last words in the e-mail:
No more canned responses, please. I’m a developer – I’m not clueless.
Then, another reply:
Hello Matt,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Web Hosting.
I would be pleased to assist you further.
Matt, it is not possible to switch Yahoo! Web Hosting for one domain to
another. Let me clarify the reason and basic difference between Yahoo!
Domain and Yahoo! Web Hosting.With Yahoo! Domains plan, you register a domain which is your web
presence. You cannot host webpages under Domains plan but you can always
forward this domain to any URL.Under Yahoo! Web Hosting plan, you get your own webspace to host
webpages. Once your Web Hosting order has been placed with a particular
domain name, it is not possible to make changes to your domain name.
During the sign-up process, we make sure to confirm your selected domain
name several times to ensure that the correct domain name will be
registered and then DNS information is propagated across all servers in
world.Matt, you cannot transfer the hosting services from one domain to
another but you can always upgrade your Yahoo! Domains plan to Yahoo!
Web Hosting.Steps to upgrade your Yahoo! Domains account:
———————————————–1. Log into your Yahoo! Domains account with your Yahoo! ID and password
by clicking on the “Sign In” link at the the top of the page:http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
2. Click the “My Services” tab
3. Click the “Change Plan” link for the account you wish to upgrade.
4. Select from the upgrade options displayed by clicking the “Choose”
button or click the “Add New Service” link to get more information about
all of the Yahoo! Small Business products.
5. Decide upon a product upgrade and complete the order process.NOTE: If you do not wish to keep the website with domain name
“mattrefghi.com” or do not want to host website under this name, you can
downgrade the service to Yahoo! Domains plan, free of cost.To downgrade your Yahoo! Web Hosting account, follow these easy steps:
1. Log into your Yahoo! Web Hosting account with your Yahoo! ID and
password at:http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/services
2. Click on the “Change Plan” link for the domain in which you wish to
change.3. Enter your Yahoo! ID password
4. Click in the “Choose” button of the plan on which you wish to
downgrade. or click on the “View all of our plans.” link to view more
services that are available to you.5. Proceed through the remainder of the checkout process to switch
services.Note: Please be aware that you are actually switching your existing
service plan. Some services that you currently enjoy may be unavailable
to you depending on the service plan selected. Please make sure to
carefully read the plan descriptions for each service option.Matt, I hope this email will assist you in right direction.
Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.
Regards,
Shelby
Yahoo! Customer Care
For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:
Shelby? Alright… for the first two e-mails, I didn’t question the fact that there were two different agents. But, three? That’s getting excessive – seems like e-mails are just being randomly assigned to an owner each time I contact. It’s almost like they want their agents to “take a shot” at a solution, without opening a dialogue to ensure it is correct. After all, if their guess is right – they don’t need to have more communication with the client. Of course, if multiple e-mails are sent, each agent must read the whole history to see what didn’t work, so it’s an approach that taxes Yahoo over time.
Furthermore, this conversation was a strange case where even if I spent time making my e-mails abundantly clear, it didn’t seem to improve the experience. The agents still continued to take shots at my problem, most of which proved incorrect. In fact, because of this, I wouldn’t be completely surprised if you told me that Yahoo’s support system was fully automated, where the software actually replies to client e-mails. The only clear proof against this, to me, seems to be the Shelby e-mail, where the fist few paragraphs seem pretty human.
In the end, Shelby’s e-mail provided me with the confirmation that I needed – Yahoo requires that you buy web hosting per domain that you purchase. Can you guess what my next reply was?
I would like to cancel my web hosting plan, but still keep my domain registrations with you.
How would I go about doing that?