Tips For Joining Many, Many Yahoo Groups.
(Updated January 21, 2020)
(Please check back to the Google Doc for updated versions, as tools are rapidly changing)
Dos
1 Create your own Yahoo User ID (instructions below) using a new temporary email.. Do not use your regular email to set up your Yahoo ID. You will be giving us password access to both the Yahoo ID and the new email address.
Don’ts
2. Do not join if you cannot complete joining within 48 hrs.
3. Do not try to bulk join using the 'Subscribe-YahooGroup@yahoogroups.com' email address. This will get your Yahoo ID shadow banned. For now, use the slow, painful website join method - with the Captchas and the typing, oh my!
User ID Group Limits
4. Try to stay under 500 join requests per Yahoo Userid. (I personally recommend much less than that, around 250, mainly because it can get overwhelming)
VPN
5. Yahoo may be-tracking IP addresses, so also stagger your Group joining or use a VPN. You will need to stagger anyway because it will take you time to join manually 500 private groups...not only will you have to fill out a Captcha but there is a required 200 character "intro"
One volunteer suggested: “Tunnelbear offers 500mb of free data transfer per month, which doesn't get you a lot but you could probably use that to join a bunch of groups (Shut down anything else you might have open that connects to the internet while you use it to maximise the data transfer available). https://www.tunnelbear.com/”
Repeated Use of The Same Join Message
6. Yahoo has 200 character limit in the Introduce Yourself box for moderated Groups. if you use the same "Hi, my name is.... let me join" message, you may stall because Yahoo may side-eye you. Mix it up a bit.
Creating new Yahoo User IDs
7. We advise setting up a temporary Yahoo UserID using a dedicated email account (one that you are not using currently) to join many groups. This will avoid you being locked out if Yahoo marks you as a spammer.
Step 1: set up a temporary email with another service (Gmail, Outlook or protonmail). This temporary email will be used only for this project. It will also allow you to separate your personal email from the 250+ Groups you are joining.You will be giving us the password to this email account
Step 2: Go to Sign Up
Click on I’d rather use my own email address.
Tips on setting up a Gmail account without a cell phone.
Step 3: Send us both the new temporary email and the Yahoo ID passwords. Do this before joining any groups. Email: archiver1.fandom@gmail.com
Where To Find Groups?
We have a list here. Find a tab, claim it by adding your name in the upper left corner and start joining When you are done, send an email to archiver1.fandom@gmail.com