Yahoo! Mail now allows ‘allah’ in usernames

Search engine giants Yahoo! and the operators of popular Yahoo! Mail service have confirmed that they are now letting people to register usernames that include the word “allah”. The company had previously applied a ban on these user ids to prevent racial abuse.

However, this announcement came a bit late as the company lost at least one user of their free service, Linda Callahan who reportedly is now satisfied with her Google Gmail account. She was disallowed to register the name of her choice at the Yahoo! Mail service.

Her son, Ed Callahan said in a statement: “She was disgusted by (Yahoo’s policy) and saddened. It was discriminatory. They disallowed ‘allah’ but allowed ‘jesus’ and ‘god,’ and I don’t think there is a rational explanation for that.”

Their experiences made news after the story was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette and was later picked on by The Register and Slashdot this week. Yahoo! too has responded and said in a statement: “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.”