Updated: Yahoo, one of the largest web sites on the planet, is being plagued by series of problems related to Domain Name System (DNS). A test using Gomez’s testing service shows error messages in certain cities such as Chicago. Others are experiencing slower access to Yahoo web sites, including the home page. There is already some chatter about this on Twitter, where people are pointing to problems with Yahoo Finance pages. If you have experienced these problems do let me know in the comments. I am going to try and talk to Yahoo and get to the bottom of it as quickly as I can.

Update: In response to my inquiry, Yahoo sent over an official statement via email, which reads:

“Yahoo! experienced a disruption in service earlier today that affected users in some geographic areas. We’ve addressed the issue and full service is now available. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. More....

103 thoughts on “DNS Problems Hit Yahoo”

  3. I had difficulties over at Flickr accessing the up.flickr.com subdomain in the last hour, but all is well there now. Also had problem with some flickr.com assets not being pulled in from their respective homes into my page, maybe related to the same issues.

    Reply

  7. All of our nagios check_dns checks at about 14:45 EST in Boston. They use yahoo.com as a default check. That go changed today 🙂

    Reply
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  12. I’ve been having issues with Upcoming all this week – it’s really slow to connect. When it does, it works fine, but the initial loading time is terrible.

    Reply

  13. Hey.. cannot get any yahoo email account page of mine to load properly… Why??? Satellite problems.. ???

    Help I need my email….!!!!!

    Reply

  15. I accessed my classic version yahoo.co.uk at about 4 am (uk time) on the 4th December. At 2.30 pm I get an error message because it times out before accessing my email account. It is 50/50 as to it accessing other areas due to slowness.

    Reply

  16. I too am having problems, I really need it sorting as soon as possible…does anyone know if it will be resolved soon, I can’t view or read emails!

    Reply

  17. I phoned Yahoo in the US….and they are not saying anything.. they told me to get rid of temporary internet files..

    My page wont load correctly.. on any of my email accounts.. WHAT IS GOING ON> > CAN SOMEONE PLSE TELL US>>>

    Tks.

    Reply

  18. Contrary to the comment from Yahoo above.. the situation has not been resolved..

    We are as you can see .. all of us, still having problems with our email.. and hey.. there’s no to contact.

    We’ve addressed the issue and full service is now available. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

    THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED> HERE IN THE UK>>>
    CAN SOMEONE PLEASE LET YAHOO KNOW!!!!!

    THANK YOU

    Reply

  19. I had problems getting into yahoo.com yesterday, but the problem eventually cleared up.

    Today, 12/4, I was able to get in for about 10 minutes early this morning, but have not been able to access yahho.com all day. THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS NOT HAVING ACCESS TO MY EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply

  20. Was able to access Y this morning but since about 2:30pm have not been able to access any Y site. I am located in Guyana South America

    Reply
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  23. Hi, My Yahoo email was kicking me out and now, as of today, I can not gain access to my mail at all. I am based in Brighton UK.

    Reply

  24. Hi, are other people in the U.k having trouble opening any YAHOO pages, I am and can’t get into any YAHOO sites to get any explanation, I have used friends computers without a problem, seems very strange that I can’t access it from my mac?? Need my emails, Not sure if this is temporary. Any advice??

    Reply

  25. IS Yahoo still down today?????????
    I still cant get into yahoo,…….I cant believe that we rely so much on emails…….grrrrrrr
    I hope they aort it soon.

    Reply

  26. Yahoo Mail hopeless all day here in UK as far as i can see …no connection – tried in both london early this morning and southampton later. will try the mobile lnk..thanks to jim price for that tip above

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  27. Yahoo down all day here in Cornwall uk. Tried always to get into the system, Made me clean up my computer thinking I had too much on it and now having found this site I realise it is not me. Hurry up Yahoo and do the decent thing, get going again or at least put a statement out to the fact your having problems.

    Reply

  28. I live in Alabama (USA) and have not been able to access Yahoo at all in the past 2 days. Is yahoo shutting down or something? I rely heavily on my email for business reasons and really don’t appreciate the inconvenience. I really hope they can fix this, otherwise I am going to have to get a new email somewhere elase and stop using yahoo.

    Reply

  29. Got it….I’ve been unable to get my Yahoo emails all day in Hampshire UK.
    I have just connected using a VPN (in my case Open VPN which is free to download and use) and finally have access to Yahoo and my emails.
    Its like getting a limb back!!

    Reply

  31. Im in NORWICH UK and problems with yahoo mail started yesterday for me not being able to download attachments. Now i can’t get on any yahoo pages, exept earlier briefly when i got on to the yahoo news site, but thjere was no mention of them having any problems on there. oh and i also tried downloading mozilla firefox web broser and still could not connect to yahoo through there, so it’s not a problem with internet explorer

    Reply

  37. Yahoo majil STILL down in Austin, TX. It’s been about 4 hrs or so since I’ve noticed the error message after login. NOT GOOD…

    Reply

  38. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO ACCESS YAHOO OR YAHOO MAIL FOR THE LAST 3 DAYS. I LIVE IN ALNWICK NORTHUMBERLAND UK.HARRY POTTER WAS FILMED IN THE CASTLE HERE WE NEED HIM BACK OBVIOUSLY!

    Reply

  39. I’m in North Wales (UK) and haven’t been able to reach any Yahoo pages since yesterday (Friday). As others have mentioned, wasted hours fiddling about with my browser, router, firewall etc. settings. Very annoying of Yahoo not to mention a problem!!

    Reply

  40. I have been unable to access any yahoo pages since first thing this morning. It was working fine last night but today nothing. All i get is internet explorer cannot display the webpage. Help

    Reply

  41. Not just me then!

    Last couple of days I cannot access any Yahoo pages at all. (Not just my email, but anything yahoo…)

    I’m in the Westcountry, England.

    I get “The browser could not find the host server for the provided address.” when I try.

    Reply

  42. Hi!

    We have been unable to connect to Yahoo for the last 24 hours, but connected at about 9.30PM 5th Dec. Internet connection was fine and was able to connect to google etc with no problem. No explanation from Yahoo.

    Regards,
    Brian.

    Reply

  44. Back on for now in Norwich but don’t know for how long as yahoo didn’t mention a problem, only a problem with american servers last week which they said they fixed and all services were back to normal! lol.

    Reply

  45. I’m still having problems with my yahoo email and opening yahoo’s homepage. I had to open a gmail account the last time that yahoo had problems.

    Reply

  46. I have not been able to get yahoo at all for over a week. Some comments say theirs is fixed. I cannot find a contact. Can anyone give me a phone number to call yahoo? Thank you

    Reply

  47. I am in South Carolina. It’s been a week or so and I’m having a hard time loading Yahoo.com. After several annoying attemps, I sometimes get through long enough to read get some of my emails. I found out that it sometimes loads fine if I have another tab open. Not anymore. I assumed it was my laptop so I upgraded IE 7.0 to 8.0, got Firefox, same results. Thank God I found this site as I was about to format my hard drive. What is going on? HELP HELP HELP.

    Reply

  49. in the NJ / Metro NYC area, and today, Yahoo Mail is VERY hit and miss. Sometimes clearing my DNS’s cache works for a bit. My guess is they are moving services around, but neglecting the TTL settings for the “A” records on their DNS servers.

    Reply

  50. Finally Yahoo is working smoothly, I’m here in Los Angeles, CA., both yahoo mail and yahoo messenger are OK, but this is a good time to make the switch to google since yahoo has been crashing, rejected by Microsoft’s partnership plan, and its stock price nearly cut down to a fraction, things are not looking good for yahoo

    Though I have found yahoo mail works better with IE, rather than FireFox

    *THUMBS DOWN*

    Reply

  51. I am in Eugene Oregon and am still unable to open my e-mail from my home computer and I do use Internet explorer! Arrggh!

    Reply

  53. We have been unable to get Yahoo to open properly in e-mail, financial or any other page we link. — Sunset Beach, NC

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  56. No Yahoo page will load today, Dec 12, in my location (northeastern US). Yahoo access has been sporadic and unpredictable for over a week now. I am wondering if Yahoo has been under attack. At my next opportunity, I *must* export the listings in my Yahoo address book. This problem looks like it will be chronic.

    Reply

  57. Here in NY state, I have had problems with yahoo not loading for 3 weeks now. It’s Friday Dec 12 at 11:21 am EST now and it’s still not working.

    Reply

  59. I’ve been having sporadic problems with Yahoo on all levels. Seems like every morning now for the past few weeks, I can’t get to my home page, email or anything else Yahoo. I also use Yahoo to host my website that I have not been able to update since 12/11/08.
    I can’t be playing internet tag with Yahoo all day to update my site. If they’re not up and running when I need to work I should get a refund. If this continues I will be forced to find another server.

    Reply

  60. Unable to access email here in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Can access other parts of yahoo, such as my calendar, but can’t get my mail (DNS lookup error).

    This is just crazy!

    Reply

  61. My email has been slow along with outgoing mail errors (San Diego) I have to refresh the page about 4 times in order for a single email to go out. No wonder google is doing far better, they never had any on going problems like this. Bye Bye Yahoo (or I can just stick with my personal email at TheDVDFeedback@PopStar.com email me )

    Reply

  62. I am very upset. I have not been able to access my secondary email account that I have a link to inside my main email account for a week now. The button to it just stopped working. I have a lot of clients that use that email addy and now I can’t reply to them. Very sad….

    Reply

  65. Same problem today, Dec 28th, in Seattle – pointing to Yahoo and Yahoo mail. Yahoo loads with the IP address, but domain name will not resolve. mail.yahoo.com will not load with either.

    I switched DNS providers and still had the problem.

    Reply

  66. 11:30am- Milwaukee WI area; was able to log onto yahoo mail & read msg’s. When trying to reply to email, error msg: “The page cannot be displayed” blah blah blah…and at end of page: “Cannot find server or DNS Error”.

    can not even get yahoo home page to load. have tried several times even restarted system. internet explorer still working & can access other e-mails.
    This is the 1st time that I have had any problems with Yahoo. Do they know of todays problems?

    Reply

  67. 2:39pm Yahoo home page not loading, will not open mail, yahoo msg shutting down on its own, pc-pc calls ending on own yo name we have experienced it. Hubby is in Iraq and yahoo msg wont let in log in for hours at at a time, and the home page is not loading there either. Come on Yahoo is there a virus or what????

    Reply

  68. FROM MADISON, WI – MyYahoo! homepage not available, all email disappeared, all contacts. Very frustrating. Will not allow me to use any homepage except Yahoo! Even after changing settings using “Tools” in WinXP.

    Reply

  70. yahoo page opens with explorer but am unable to open mail link or any other options on yahoo. running trend micro scan for second time and is not resolving issue. what’s going on with yahoo? hotmail and gmail are working fine. is it internet explorer that is having the problem? noticed that yahoo has a recommendation in the left corner to use Firefox 3 and is wondering if explorer has banned the yahoo site access or if there has been a known problem with explorer hence why yahoo is suggesting a switch. issues have been very frustrating!

    Reply

  72. It has been weeks since my.yahoo.com stopped working for my home page. I have gone round and round following recommendations which just don’t work. It appears to be a Yahoo problem (not IE, Cox, MS or Antivirus) and they don’t appear to be working on a fix. Unless MS infected Yahoo with a virus to reduce the company’s value for takeover, I cannot explain the sudden and complete failure of the Yahoo pages and links.

    Reply

  73. my yhoo still not working either it hs been over 2 months now 7 still cn’t get the thing to work no emils of ny sort sorry eigh not working proper neednew keybord. Unhppy in NZ no emils from yhoo.

    Reply

  74. Yahoo email not working in Southwest Missouri late Thursday night Jan 8th… times out over and over and over.

    Reply

  75. yup.. I get the same thing. I’ve tried several solutions. It still doesn’t work, although it’s only been a few days for me.

    Oddly, I did turned off my firewall and did a dns flush, and it was fixed for about 15 minutes. But then it reverted. And the fix doesn’t do anything anymore.

    Reply

  76. I cannot load my yahoo, and I had to reboot my system a short time ago and cannot get my messinger to load. messinger works fine on my laptop though

    Reply

  77. can’t access any yahoo web service especially yahoo mail….i did some troubleshooting within my network..my proxy server (ISA) and client computers..still no result im in philippines please help..wat’s going on?

    Reply

  78. I’m having problems logging in with yahoo messenger. yahoo websites are way too slow. Anyone experiencing this?
    I’m here at the philippines, just wondering if this is global yahoo problem.

    Reply

  81. I can’t access Yahoo, Microsoft, OpenDNS for 24 hours yesterday. But the problem cured itself. I woke up this morning and everything returned to normal. Weird.

    Reply

  82. I live in Washington state and ever since this morning I can not get Yahoo to come up. It is now 1:20 pm PST and still not working. I know everyone else here at work is having the same problem.
    Msn & Google are working for us.

    Reply

  84. I cannot access Yahoo since a week.. I supposed it was due to the browser but firefox. explorer, fock, camino.. none of this work.. I’m in Northern Italy.. Does anybody knows what’s happening?

    Reply

  85. I’m in Georgia (USA), and for the past couple of days, my mail (beta not classic) would load up and then freeze the browser. I know the problem isn’t on my end.

    Reply

  86. For the past two weeks or so my Yahoo email has been TWITCHY – it jumps up and down making it very hard to write. Sometimes it just jumps out of the email I’m typing and I lose it altogether. It’s not my computer as I have two and it’s the same on both. Any reasons/suggestions/solutions????

    Reply

  87. I was thinking I had a virus of something my computer does not load Yahoo.com ca.yahoo.com mx.yahoo.com
    I reformat my hard drive I reinstall windows I still can’t connect.

    Please let me know how to fix it.

    thanks

    Reply

  89. I live in Indiana. Yahoo has been acting crazy on me for the past week and a half. When trying to write something in the subject box, it will not let me. Matter of fact It auto generates the subject line.

    Here are some examples:

    – LipSmack heartAttack girlie girl in a pink sleep sack

    – How to Comb Your Curly Hair

    – Is your coffee table decaff?

    – Your earrings would make a great fishing lure!

    – Quote me as saying I was misquoted.

    – four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

    – Thank god and Greyhound she’s gone

    – Scratch golfer finds ball in poison oak

    – rotating platinum pants

    – My favorite color is Vanna White
    THIS IS JUST PER CRAZY!!! Guess I am going to have to go to another, like AOL or something.

    Reply

  91. Many of my friends and contacts have e-mails in Yahoo (the com and the es version), and already for about a week there are problems delivering my email to them from my domain account. However, sending from my Hotmail account there seems to be no problem. Maybe this comment helps.

    Reply

  92. I’ve wondered for some time what’s going on with Yahoo. It is very very slow to respond and drives me crazy. This is intermittent, but more often than not. I leave it alone and go brush my teeth or fix lunch and sometimes when I come back it still hasn’t responded. I’ve thought they have too many people working and changing too many things but then I’m not very knowledgeable about computers.

    Reply

  93. I am not able to access the domain yahoo.com for past 2 days, even yahoo messenger is not working for me. I am from Chennai, India.

    Reply

  94. Since the beginning of this week – Sept 7th – I cannot get into YAHOO at all using IE 7.0.5. I either get directed to that stupid BING site, and whenever I click on any of the links there, I get the ‘Internet Explorer cannot display the Webpage’ msg. Or it goes directly to the same message.

    No other site is affected – just YAHOO. So I can’t access my mail, or do anything connected with YAHOO. THis is driving me to distraction, and I can’t even notify YAHOO as I CAN’T GET ONTO THEIR WRETCHED SITE! And, yes, I am screaming. Very loudly.

    Once…if..this … gets resolved, I am outta YAHOO so quickly they won’t see me for dust.

    Reply

  95. I recently got a new laptop with Windows Vista on it. I can access my Yahoo mail from our desktop, but
    when I use the laptop, I can get to the mail, but once I open it to read it, it freezes up. I can read one email, I can even access a link within the email, but I cannot delete the email or go back to the list. Basically, after I read one email…I’m stuck and have to close out the program. Not sure if this is a Yahoo problem or a Vista problem.?.? Any help would be appreciated.

    Reply

  98. Yahoo need to get it together, this is so inconvenient, I have had this account for over 5 years, Loosing it will mean losing few long time friend. Why now , why during the holiday. Please Dear Yahoo technician GET IT TOGETHER AND FIX THE PROBLEM_ THIS IS OUR SECOND WEEK NOW!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply

  100. I have been experiencing problem for the past two weeks, slow downloads,freezing, kicked out of yahoo games and problems logging onto yahoo.

    Reply

  101. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Cannot sign in to check Email or sign in to check Finance Portfilio….Still not working at 1.40pm Mountain time

    Reply

  103. My message writing window will not allow me to write in it. It will allow a “LINK”, though…but, i cannot write in my window…

    Reply

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