Why can't I subscribe to Yahoo! Groups with certain email addresses?

[Zomi Community Network]

We prohibit two kinds of email addresses from subscribing to Yahoo! Groups:

- "Role email addresses" with prefixes like "info", "admin", "webmaster", "sales", "support", etc...

- "Group" or "List" email addresses like "yahoogroups.com", "googlegroups.com", "topica.com", etc...

"Role addresses" are prohibited because of the burden they place on Customer Care. At one time, these types of addresses were allowed, but they created enormous volumes of complaints to our Customer Care team. Two reasons why:

1. In many organizations, multiple people receive messages sent to these email addresses. So one person in the organization might choose to subscribe to a group using that address only to annoy everyone else on that distribution list who would suddenly start receiving email from a group they had never subscribed to.

2. To make matters worse, unsubscribing via email doesn't usually work for these addresses, since the user's email client uses their individual address in the "from" field, while the unsubscribe system requires that the request come from the email address that is actually subscribed to the group.

"Group addresses", meanwhile, are banned for the same reasons, although there are additional concerns for these addresses around mailing loops and copyright issues. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/email/emai...