According to a report on MacNN, Yahoo! has withdrawn POP3 access for external mail clients like Mail.app. Yahoo! webmail users will now only be able to use the service’s webmail interface.

The news item points to a Yahoo! Mail support statement that reads:

As a web-based email service, Yahoo! Mail does not currently offer access to POP or SMTP servers. This means that you will not be able to use an external email client such as Netscape Mail, Eudora, or Outlook to access your Yahoo! Mail account.

This seems to be a odds with other information (still?) on the Yahoo! Mail support site about POP3 access for Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts, and with my recollection that POP access has always been denied to users with free accounts.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

UPDATE: Hmmm…. This may be a false alarm. Light shed in the comments suggests that no major change to existing restrictions has occurred. [Thanks, Ivan et al.]