Man Says A-L-L-A-H in Name Blocked E-Mail

[Judi Lynn]

Man Says A-L-L-A-H in Name Blocked E-Mail

Wis. Man Says `a-L-L-A-H' in Name Blocked His Attempt to Sign Up for Yahoo E-Mail Account

FOUNTAIN CITY, Wis. Feb 23, 2006 (AP)— A man says his attempts to sign up for an e-mail account with Yahoo failed when he used his name, which includes the letters a-l-l-a-h as in Allah, the Arabic word for God.

Ed Callahan said he started trying to establish the e-mail account after his mother, with the same last name, couldn't get one.

As he tried using various words, he determined that e-mail addresses with other religious words seemed OK, but not if they included the spelling of Allah.

"The war on terror is becoming a war on Muslims," Callahan said.

Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday it has changed policy to allow usage of the word. In a written statement, the company defended the previous policy as an attempt to protect users from hateful speech.
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1652403

[wookie294]

1. I moved onto Google email because Yahoo censors stuff too much

Yahoo is "big brother" -- more so than Google. It will only get worse.

[woodsprite]

3. Just don't use Google Desktop. We've been cautioned by

our IT/User Svcs dept. that when you use that, you authorize them to "copy up" some of your files from your hard drive to their servers. Supposedly, they're to be "expired" after a certain lenght of time, but what the He!! do they need peoples personal info on their servers for.

Seems there is a heckofalot more at stake if Google shares their files with the FEDS than mere email.

According to internetnews.com:

"Google Desktop Search lets users search documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, instant messages and Web pages that have been visited by that PC. To enable this, it creates cached versions of Web content -- which could include sensitive corporate information stored on servers and accessed via a Web interface.

Enterprises often allow mobile workers to connect to the corporate network using secure VPNs via their home computers, hotel business centers, a customer site or Internet kiosks found at airports and cafes.

Hickernell said that if the person who downloaded the desktop search tool has administrative rights to the local machine, the tool also could search any drives attached to the machine, for example, a departmental drive or server. When the tool indexes local files, it will also index the remote files if the PC is connected long enough.

Then, he said, "Another user can come behind you and see the cached copy of the content."

[drduffy]

2. plus Yahoo caved into

the justice department regarding spying on our information. The main terrorists are in Washington. They are called neocon fascists and they have killed far far more innocents than islamists ever have. They are called BushCo.