Sunnyvale, California — Yahoo Mail, one of the largest web-based email services, which boasts more than 250 million users worldwide, suffered a partial outage, and according to the company, at least one million users may have lost access to their accounts over the weekend, even as Yahoo said that the problem has already been resolved.
The problem cropped up at around 7:30 a.m. Pacific time Thursday and became extremely adverse by 11 a.m., according to Stephanie Shum, senior product manager for Yahoo Mail, wrote in a blog post.
At the problem’s peak, around one million out of Yahoo Mail’s 250 million users (less than 0.04 percent) could not access their email accounts. However, “No email data was lost or at risk. We understand that being denied access to your email is extremely frustrating. We are taking steps to prevent this kind of outage in the future,” Shum wrote.
It is strange that the company was so indistinct in their responses about how many customers were hit by the outage, what was the cause, and how long the problem lasted. We have only learned when it started, the number of people impacted and the peak of the problems. Also, there is no information as to when they commenced the recover process and what time it was completed. There is no information as to what they discovered as to the problem that started this whole situation which has so many people upset at the lack of mail availability.
But, according to a post at twitter: Yahoo Mail is currently inaccessible to some users. We are working to rectify the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We are aware that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might be affected.
Spokesman Jason Khoury said the outage affected a “small subset of customers.”
Yahoo mail users took to twitter with the hashtag #yahoomail to express their displeasure, commiserate, or offer solutions. For the customers without mail, though, the outage trigged outrage, particularly on Twitter. Comments there ranged from the polite, such as @stickmantoo‘s “May I just say I’m not a fan of #yahoomail right now. #fail”, to the more helpless pleading of @susanborst, who tweeted, “Come on #yahoomail…upgrading servers…” should clear up within a couple of hours”? #really?”
Some other user like e_warren wrote: I guess I should be honored – #yahoomail is only down for “selected users”. I’m special!. While @bmorisette posted: My Yahoo Plus account has not had a problem all day – guess my $20 / year went towards better servers for paying customers #yahoo #yahoomail.
Theories abound that Yahoo Mail’s recent upgradation of its service and redesign is at fault. Also, in March, Yahoo Mail consolidated a feature that lets you chat with your Facebook friends, by importing your Facebook contacts. Some have suggested that Yahoo’s mobile site is still functional and is a good alternative until the service gets online.
Nevertheless, it is not clear when Yahoo actually got the email back up and running smoothly for all of its users. Yahoo also did not specify what caused the problem.