As promised, Yahoo on Monday discontinued their Classic Mail service and is requiring that all users upgrade to the new version in order to continue to use the service. Yahoo revealed that Classic Mail was being discontinued back in April but they conveniently left out one important bit of information regarding the new terms of service and privacy policy.

Those that agree to the updated ToS / privacy policy should take note of the fine print as acceptance includes automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content. Yahoo says e-mail scanning will help deliver product features, relevant advertising and abuse protection.

Sound familiar? It should because it is the same sort of policy that Google employs with Gmail. Yahoo allows users to opt out of interest-based and contextual-based advertising resulting from scanned and analyzed communications content but there's no way to opt out of the scanning and analyzing itself.

So what's a Yahoo mail user to do if you don't want to agree to these new terms? The only option at this point is to close your account and move to a different e-mail provider. Yahoo does permit users to download their Yahoo mail using IMAP via a different e-mail program like Outlook, Mac Mail or an app on your mobile device. But even still, you'll have to agree to the revised terms of service.

How do you feel about Yahoo and Gmail scanning your messages for advertising purposes? One thing is clear -  we certainly know Microsoft's stance on the issue.