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February 27, 2006
Yahoo! Puts the Allah Back in Callahan
John Oates of The Register reports that Yahoo! will no longer block people from creating user IDs with the word Allah in it. The debate began last year when a man named Ed Callahan was blocked by Verizon from registering an email address for his mother because their surname, Callahan, contained the word "Allah" in the middle of it. Verizon was using Yahoo! for its mail system, apparently, and any variation of the word Allah was blocked automatically when you tried to register it, even if Allah was just a row of letters in the middle of a surname.
As noted by Haitham Sabbah last week, versions of the word Allah were banned in Yahoo! email accounts, while words such as god, jesus, buddha and yahweh were acceptable. Apparently, complaints by the Callahans and Muslim bloggers were effective, because Yahoo! has changed their policy:
We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s Terms of Service.'Allah' was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience.
So Mr. Callahan's mom can now have her Yahoo! email address, as can anyone else who'd like to express themselves with the word Allah in their user name. I'm sorry to report, though, that any login name containing the word "Osama" still cannot be registered on Yahoo!. Perhaps there was a concern that Mr. Bin Laden would try to register as himself so he could keep up with colleagues, like Ayman Zawahiri and Abu Zarqawi. (Ironically, if you're name is Zarqawi or Zawahiri, you're more than welcome to register; I just tried registering ZarqawiStud and ZawahiriBaby, and Yahoo! congratulated me that both names were available.)
As a test, I tried registering some Osama variants, including osamalamamama63, 4osamarama874d and bigosamashazbot. None of them was available, and I cannot imagine the names were actually taken already. Osama, of course, is simply the Arabic version of the name Samuel, so all the innocent, law abiding citizens of the world who just happen to be named Osama are out of luck when it comes to selecting a personalized Yahoo! email address. What's puzzling, though, is that my friend Osama Manzar uses a Yahoo! address with his name in it. He must have been grandfathered in by Yahoo! when their anti-Osama policy was created.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at February 27, 2006 2:22 PM
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