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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Yahoo Mail!! Fixes iPhone IMAP Data Leak

I am a devoted Gmail user, and have been for a long time. I had a Yahoo! Mail account years ago. I switched over to Gmail because at that time, I couldn’t sync my Yahoo! Calendar to my newly purchased iPhone. Even though the calendar issue has since been remedied, they keep giving me good reasons to stay away.

Earlier this year, a report claimed that Yahoo! Mail was the cause of false data usage by smartphone users. In the land where the unlimited plan is becoming more extinct, this could possibly amount to hundreds of dollars in overage fees. The study noted that Apple iPhone and Windows Phone users were among the most affected…

Programmer Rafael Rivera found the culprit to be a bug inside Yahoo! Mail servers. When the iPhone would go to check for new Yahoo! Mail, the server would return way more information than needed. If you checked your email a few times a day, this extra data added up quickly.

After almost 3 months, Yahoo! has finally stepped in and fixed the issue. Rivera confirms on his blog that Yahoo! Mail no longer sends full message headers when the smartphone requests mail. Instead, a short sequence of digits (Message ID) is sent to minimize the amount of data transferred

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