Windows Phone 7 Data Leak Caused by Yahoo! Mail App

Microsoft has confirmed that a problem exists with the Yahoo! Mail app on Windows Phone 7. The problem is that the application uses 25 times more data than it should whilst loading up and retrieving emails. For those who often use WiFi, it might not be a huge problem, but for those on 3G, it could be quietly eating away at a lot of your data allowance each month.

The problem was found by Rafael over at Windows Phone Secrets who managed to check IMAP packets being sent. By using a script to strip out encryption, he was able to find that the Yahoo mail server doesn’t respond correctly to FETCH requests which in turn, increases traffic actually needed by a hefty 25 times. He goes on to say that problems also exist separately to this in that the WiFi has a habit of sometimes disconnecting and quietly switching users to 3G when they expect to be on Wireless.

Yesterday, Microsoft actually confirmed that the findings on Windows Phone Secrets were correct and that Yahoo! Mail was responsible for eating up some data allowance. Of course, not all Windows Phone 7 users will use mail, and a lot might not even notice a dent in their allowance, but we expect that Yahoo! will pick up on this and correct things shortly.

In another announcement, Microsoft confirmed that Yahoo! was aware of the problem now and that a fix is being rolled out within the next few weeks.

Microsoft also suggest that to lessen the impact of the problem that you switch from checking emails every 2 hours automatically and switch it to manually check until the problem is fixed.

Via: GajIt

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