Yahoo Mail suffers outage; users react
Mail service was down for many, and affected users took to Twitter to complain. Yahoo now says all's well again, after acknowledging problems for "some users in certain locations."
Yahoo Mail today was down for many users today, but according to the online company, its services are now operating normally.
Earlier today, CNET heard from a reader who claimed that "Yahoo Mail has been experiencing severe outage issues for the last 24-hours plus." After attempting to access Yahoo's Mail service, CNET received an error message saying that the "page you requested was not found." Other attempts yielded a "connection refused" message from the site. When trying to access the mail service through Yahoo's QuickView, the service said that it could not "connect to your mail server."
It appears that the issue was affecting people around the globe. On Twitter, a slew of users are posting tweets, saying that they cannot connect to the service. Some have put it simply, saying, "can't log into Yahoo Mail." Others seem perplexed, with one person asking, "why is Yahoo Mail so messed up?"
Several people on Twitter have said that they've been having trouble with authentication. A few users said that they tried resetting their passwords multiple times, and the service still did not work.
In addition to those complains, DownRightNow.com, a site that tracks downtime for popular Web services, is reporting that Yahoo Mail appears to be down.
But the outage wasn't universal, apparently. Two CNET staffers say they're having no problem accessing Yahoo Mail.
In an e-mailed statement to CNET today, Yahoo acknowledged that it was having some troubles with its services, and was working to bring them back online.
"Some Yahoo services are currently inaccessible to some users in certain locations," the company told CNET in an e-mailed statement. "We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might be affected."
In a follow-up statement to CNET, Yahoo said that "we worked quickly to resolve the issue, and are pleased that all services are restored to full functionality."
Yahoo Mail's outage comes at an inopportune time for the company. Just last week, Google launched a tongue-in-cheek "e-mail intervention" tool that helps existing Gmail users coax their friends into switching from their existing provider to Google's offering.
"You've probably already improved the lives of your friends and family members by helping them switch to Gmail, but what about that one friend who still hasn't made the switch?" Google's site reads. "It's time to take a stand and stage an intervention."
Update at 8:30 a.m. PT and at 9:30 a.m. PT to include Yahoo statements.