Comments on: Is yahoo.net a valid email extension?

Question: Is yahoo.net a valid email extension?

agathafrye — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:18:58 -0800

Is yahoo.net a valid email extension?

Hi, all. I feel slightly ignorant asking this question, but I can't seem to find an answer on the general intertubes. I am a public librarian, and I was just helping a gentleman send an email to his brother. He insisted that the address his brother gave him was xxx@yahoo.net. I told him that typically yahoo email addresses end in .com, but he was pretty adamant about the address. We sent the email to both places- xxx@yahoo.net and xxx@yahoo.com, and the yahoo.com email bounced back, but the yahoo.net email didn't. Typing in www.yahoo.net takes you to the regular yahoo.com home page. Does anyone have any insight into this conundrum?

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:35:22 -0800

Well, yahoo.net exists and accepts mail, but it has an entirely separate set of mailservers and IP addresses from yahoo.com. OTOH, they are registered to the same Yahoo as yahoo.com. Hm.

By: Leon

Leon — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:45:10 -0800

In the old days, .net was intended for companies that were involved in maintaining internet infrastructure (eg Demon employees were on demon.net, while Demon customers were on demon.co.uk). Maybe his brother was simply a Yahoo! employee.

By: chesty_a_arthur

chesty_a_arthur — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:45:46 -0800

More hm:

http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/
http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.net/

It seems unlikely that it's a free email address, but it's definitely an active URL 99% likely to be under Yahoo's control.

Otherwise it is an elaborate and boring hoax.

By: zerbinetta

zerbinetta — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:50:49 -0800

Maybe his brother was simply a Yahoo! employee.

As far as I know, yahoo-inc.com is what they use for employee addresses.

By: effbot

effbot — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:51:48 -0800

They use yahoo.net for various development sites (see e.g. http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/), so maybe the gentleman's brother works for them?

By: Leon

Leon — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:02:01 -0800

http://mail.yahoo.net/

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:37:10 -0800

Seems like Some promotion they ran in 2006, and they still haven't updated the page. here's another article. Weird.

By: palionex

palionex — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:52:12 -0800

If you're asking about the domain www.yahoo.net, take a look at its whois record. Since it's a yahoo owned domain, it seems reasonable that they can use it for email.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:55:48 -0800

It seems to be an address that bellsouth.net customers were forced to change to.

By: agathafrye

agathafrye — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:48:51 -0800

Thanks for the feedback, folks! Mostly, this guy had no idea what he was doing, so I was shocked that the email went through at all. He was also trying to send a gmail email through google. As in, typing the email in the google search box. :/