Yahoo Mail has "temporarily disabled" the ability for users to forward their emails onto a different address. The company claims this is while it works to improve the feature, but the timing is just a little bit suspicious, to say the least.

As first reported by The Associated Press, Yahoo has disabled Mail Forwarding. The option to set up a new forwarding address disappeared at the beginning of the month. Which just happens to coincide with two major stories bound to tempt people into leaving for pastures new.

First, the login credentials of 500 million Yahoo users turned up on the dark web. Then Yahoo was caught snooping on its users' emails for the NSA. Both of these stories are reason enough to quit Yahoo. Unfortunately, that's virtually impossible right now thanks to Yahoo disabling Mail Forwarding.

Yahoo Help offers some advice on the issue, but it's not particularly helpful:

"This feature is under development. While we work to improve it, we've temporarily disabled the ability to turn on Mail Forwarding for new forwarding addresses. If you've already enabled Mail Forwarding in the past, your email will continue to forward to the address you previously configured."

A Solution to a Problem Which Shouldn't Exist

Mobile product manager Merissa Silk gave the AP a simple solution for Yahoo Mail users looking to decamp to a different service. Silk has set up an out-of-office message on her Yahoo Mail account which reads, "Following recent data and privacy breaches, I will be discontinuing use of Yahoo Mail." She then offers up her new email address for those who need to contact her.

It's a great solution, of that there is no doubt, but it's a solution to a problem which shouldn't exist in the first place. Yahoo needs to enable Mail Forwarding again as soon as possible, even if means users can then escape its clutches.

As others have already said, Yahoo Mail feels like Hotel California right now: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!" For the millenials reading, that's a reference to a song by The Eagles. I am old.

Are you a Yahoo Mail user? How do you feel about the recent data dump? Or the NSA rifling through your emails? Would you like to set up Mail Forwarding in order to move to another email service? Please let us know in the comments below!

Image Credit: Torbakhopper via Flickr