ID is not only your email address, it also gives you access to content tailored to your interests – like sports scores for your favorite teams, weather in your hometown, and news that matters to you. This means you can finally have albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com, for example. But it’s not just deactivating these accounts, it’s going to offer them to other people. In mid July, anyone can have a shot at scoring the Yahoo! for over a year, but want to keep your Yahoo! In mid August, users who staked a claim on certain IDs can come to Yahoo! to discover which one they got. This may have seemed like a good way to get people to log in again, or to try to convert new users to a groovy Yahoo address. For example, someone who uses a Yahoo email address solely as a backup for Gmail, and thus hasn’t logged into it for a long time, would be vulnerable to having that address taken over by a malicious individual who only wanted to ultimately get into the active Gmail address.  By Jay Rossiter, SVP, Platforms 
 
 Over the last few months, we’ve made exciting changes to some of your favorite Yahoo!
– Got an old Yahoo email address kicking around that you haven't checked in a year or so? Better log in over the next few weeks if you'd like to keep it. Otherwise, Yahoo is going to free it up for someone else. The example it uses is letting someone claim an address of "albert@yahoo.com" rather than "albert9330399@yahoo.com." It may sound like some harmless house-cleaning, but this is a "spectacularly bad idea," writes Mat Honan at Wired. "It means that people will be able to claim Yahoo IDs and use them to take over other people’s identities via password resets and other methods," he writes. If someone has a seldom-used Yahoo account as a backup to Gmail, for example, this raises the possibility that the new owner of the Yahoo address will figure out a way into the Gmail account. Yahoo insists it will take pains to make sure that any recycled ID is safe and secure, but Honan wants the company to rethink this one. Otherwise, "this is going to lead to a social engineering gold rush come mid-July." Click for his full post.