Final Countdown Yahoo Groups (Yes, This Is The Final One)

[morgandawn]

 

timeanddate.com

Yahoo Groups Countdown Timer

Countdown to Jan 31, 2020 11:00 pm. Showing days, hours, minutes and seconds ticking down to 0

Back in December, due to the hard work of many people (including the OTW who wrote a letter to Verizon asking for more time) we were granted an extension on the time limit  we had to join Yahoo Groups and request copies of the group archives. That deadline ends tomorrow Jan 31, 2020. If  you are  a  member of any Yahoo Group you still have 24 hrs+ to sign into Yahoo and request a copy of your Groups archives. You will get a copy of all the messages and the files ever posted to the Group (no photos however, those have been deleted).

How to request your Group data: https://yahoo-geddon.tumblr.com/post/188638695729/yahoo-groups-deletion-requesting-your-groups

Comments

[kiwisue]

I run some non-fannish (re-enactment) Yahoo lists. All of these are subscriber only and there is no way in the world these would be considered fannish. We've done what we can in terms of archiving and we are not prepared to make list contents public.

From late January I started to receive applications to join the lists. Some cite the archive effort, which is fine, although they get knocked back:
"Archiveteam.org is creating a public archive of old Groups before Yahoo deletes all message and file data. May we archive your group, please? Accept if yes, deny if no. FAQ: tinyurl.com/v2tf6ha
This membership request requires your approval because the
xxxxxxx group is restricted, which means you must
approve each new member."

Some just say they'd like to join. Often they have a fannish name - tuppenceberesford3 was the latest one.

The problem is, these requests have continued way past the Yahoo deadline. So far I have denied all of them, but they keep coming. Bots must be at work. It's getting annoying. Do you have any information about whether the post-January requests are legitimate or not, or has something slipped out of the bag?

[morgandawn]

Most of the join requests were from legitimate teams working either for fandom groups or for the Internet Archive team who focused on all topics, not just fandom. The January 31 date was the official cutoff date but because Yahoo! Groups was so behind on processing download requests, volunteers continued to try to join to assist groups in saving their data. I believe that the tuppence account was the last active archiving attempt. Since you turned them down, your data will be forever gone unless you've saved it yourself. What were the groups that you manage ? If you're lucky, an existing subscriber might have submitted a data request and your information might still be saved somewhere

[kiwisue]

I have multiple copies (Yahoo data and PGOffline) and I'm working with the current committee to archive them with some form of controlled access.

The Tuppence account I mentioned because the name stuck in my head for some reason, it is good to know that it was a legitimate IA account that requested access. I briefed the other moderators about the purpose of the requests but we decided since the conversations were private they should stay that way as much as possible. FYI the lists all had ALHF in the name, so alhf_committee, alhf_members etc.

The request from tuppenceberesford3 was 17 Feb my time. I've since had requests from nyopxbrgbas00iky at hotmail.com. and swidefwmbqhft1nj at outlook.com using the IA text. That was yesterday. So the messages seem to be coming from very bot-like addresses now. I just wondered if you were aware of them - continuing IA activity?

[morgandawn]

I don't have visibility to the Archive Team accounts, but the join requests continued as long as Yahoo groups was still processing data requests. You can always email them back and ask for more info.

However, since you plan to deny all archive requests there should be no further action needed on your part. Good luck with your archiving. Lots of groups moved to groups.io