Yahoo! Mail Puts Spam In Its Place

New Spamguard Technology Reduces Mailbox Clutter; New Features Enhance Premier Free Web-based Mail Service

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- December 1, 1999 -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet media company with a worldwide audience of more than 105 million users, today announced Spamguard, a new feature for Yahoo!® Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com) that is expected to significantly reduce the intrusion of unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as spam. Using innovative technology recently developed at Yahoo!, Spamguard automatically detects spam and directs it to a separate folder. Yahoo! Mail is the first major free Web-based e-mail provider to offer users this free mail management tool. Spamguard is the newest of several efforts Yahoo! Mail has implemented to fight spam.

"Finding new ways to prevent spam is the number one request among e-mail users," said Geoff Ralston, vice president and general manager of Yahoo!'s Communications Services Group. "We developed Spamguard as a direct response to their feedback. We're proud to be leading the industry in finding effective ways to fight spam and improve our users' e-mail experience."

A Better Way To Handle Bulk Mail and Cut Down on Spam
Since unsolicited e-mail can often clog a user's inbox, Yahoo! Mail's new Spamguard technology will help reduce e-mail clutter by automatically directing unsolicited bulk items to a separate, "bulk mail" folder. This dynamic feature gives users the ability to notify Yahoo! if they feel mail has been misdirected. They can also set up their own filters to override the bulk mail folder for specific kinds of e-mail or, if they choose, they may turn off Spamguard entirely. A complete help section is available at http://help.yahoo.com/help/mail/spam.

Yahoo! Mail is committed to fighting spam and already has a variety of programs in place:
· In April 1999, Yahoo! filed lawsuit and obtained judgements concerning spamming.
· A "Block Sender" capability allows people to block mail from specific addresses.
· Users can take advantage of filters as a way to direct messages with particular criteria to specific folders, or directly to the trash.
· Yahoo! encourages users to notify Yahoo! of spam that appears to be sent from Yahoo! accounts and other abuse by sending e-mail to abuse@yahoo.com.
· Yahoo! Mail's help section has several useful tips for e-mail users to help them understand what spam is and what they can do to fight it.

Additional Storage Space
In addition to Spamguard, Yahoo! Mail also announced a new premium service that allows users to increase the amount of storage space in their inbox to 20 megabytes (MB) from the current free three megabytes (MB). The expanded mail box is available to United States users only for $19.99 per year.

For Web-based e-mail users who want to manage large amounts of incoming mail, additional storage space offers them greater flexibility and allows them to receive hundreds of e-mails at one, easy-to-access e-mail address. Combined with already available features such as free POP access and mail forwarding, heavy Internet users can rely on Yahoo! Mail to be the one place to centralize all their electronic correspondence. Yahoo! Mail users who opt for the additional megabytes of storage will use the recently introduced Yahoo! Wallet (http://wallet.yahoo.com), a service that stores personal billing information, to sign up and pay. Yahoo! Wallet uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security standard which is widely used by popular Internet browsers and merchants transacting on the Web. During transmission over the Web, SSL encrypts data to protect it from being read by anyone other than the intended recipient.

Personalized Formatting
Another new feature on Yahoo! Mail allows users to select formatted text to give their e-mail correspondence enhanced style. Formatted text gives users several choices when creating messages including multiple fonts, text size, text color, background color, bold, underline, italics and other options found in many word processing programs. People also can incorporate Internet hyperlinks in the text of their e-mail messages. Formatted text currently is available to users of Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher in the United States.

Introduced in October 1997, Yahoo! Mail, is one of the Internet's most popular Web-based mail services. It is tightly integrated with several other Yahoo! properties including Yahoo! Address Book (http://address.yahoo.com), where users can save contact information for friends, family and colleagues, Yahoo! Calendar (http://calendar.yahoo.com), a leading Web-based scheduling program that offers content, sharing, synchronization and more, and Yahoo! Greetings (http://greetings.yahoo.com), a broad selection of electronic greeting cards. Yahoo! Mail can be accessed from a wide range of wireless devices including Palm Pilots, and Windows CE devices as well as Web-enabled cell phones and pagers.

Yahoo! Mail is part of Yahoo!'s comprehensive suite of communications services, which aim to give users everything they need all in one place to communicate and organize their lives via the Web. From instant messaging, free e-mail and voice chat to address books, calendars, and personal file storage, Yahoo!'s integrated services offer a wide range of options including the ability to receive e-mail and send messages and alerts to wireless devices such as cell phones, pagers and personal digital assistants.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) is a global Internet media company that offers a branded network of media, commerce, and communication services to more than 100 million users worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach, and is one of the most recognized brands associated with the Internet. The company also provides online business services designed to enhance Yahoo!'s clients' Web services, including audio and video streaming, store hosting and management, and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 21 World properties. Yahoo! has offices in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Canada and the United States, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif.