Yahoo Disables Mail Forwarding in the Wake of Data Breach to Maintain Fleeing Users

Following last month’s announcement of a huge data breach that affected around 500 million accounts, Yahoo has reportedly made it harder for users to switch to another email client, according to a new report.  At the start of the month, Yahoo has reportedly disabled an email forwarding feature that would allow users to automatically redirect emails to a non-Yahoo account, the Associated Press reported. According to many experts, this is a pretty blatant move to stem an exodus of Yahoo users who want to switch email providers in the wake of recent events.

According to several reports, Yahoo users who have already set up automatic forwarding won’t be affected by this change, but users who want to turn on the feature now won’t be able to. Yahoo declined to comment on the matter, and when the Associated Press tried to dig deeper, they were directed to a post on Yahoo’s Help Site. “This feature is under development. While we work to improve it, we’ve temporarily disabled the ability to turn on Mail Forwarding for new forwarding addresses,” the Yahoo help post read.

In addition to security concerns over the 500 million potentially compromised accounts that were stolen in 2014, another report has come out recently that alleges Yahoo used custom software to search user emails for specific information provided by U.S. Intelligence. But this isn’t the first time that Yahoo has made it intentionally difficult for users to leave. Just this month, users of BT, who had recently outsourced their email service to Yahoo, found that, in addition to mail forwarding being disabled, they were unable to delete their accounts, according to TechCrunch.

These recent events have caused Yahoo to come under scrutiny from potential investors. In fact, some recent reports state that Verizon — who is currently trying to acquire Yahoo — is asking for a billion dollar discount on the purchase, Business Insider reported.