Yahoo! shifts blame onto Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 phantom data

Yesterday Yahoo! issued a statement regarding the Windows Phone 7 phantom data bug that's been causing users to burn through data on their WP7 handsets at an alarming, data plan busting rate. Today we get yet another statement, this time one that is shifting the blame onto Microsoft.

"Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM. The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices. Yahoo! has offered to provide Microsoft a near-term solution for the implementation they chose, and is encouraging Microsoft to change to a standard way of integrating with Yahoo! Mail, which would result in a permanent fix."

So, no problem on the iPhone, or Android, or Blackberry or any other handset, just Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 handsets.

The other day Windows Phone 7 guru Rafael Rivera confirmed that the third-party service responsible for the over enthusiastic use of data was Yahoo! Mail, and showed how checking mail on Yahoo! servers could use 25 times more data than actually needed. Rivera blamed the Yahoo! IMAP server and the fact that it doesn’t respond to FETCH requests correctly. Now Yahoo! is shifting the blame back onto Microsoft.

If you're affected by this issue then while you wait for Microsoft and Yahoo! to implement a fix you can implement a temporary solution by following the instructions outlined in this post.