WHITBY, ON—When Deb George, 52, first read the headline in the Durham Region Gazette she could hardly believe it. "It was an article about how Yahoo! has steadily been losing email users and revenue and I just, I kinda freaked. It's the only email server I trust."

George explains, "My daughter set up an account for me in 1997 – debbiesdonuts314@yahoo.com – and I use it for everything!"

With the threat weighing heavily on her mind, George decided she had no choice but to take immediate action and send out a chain email to her book club friends, sisters and girls at the bagel place with the subject line "Send this to 89 of your friends or Yahoo email will shut down forever!!!!!!!$#@&!?*!"

As an extra precaution, George says she also initiated her "friend phone tree" and made sure Linda C. and Deb P. put the word out on their Facebook pages (as both are top Mary Kay cosmetic salesladies in the region and have "upwards of 110 followers each").

This isn't the first time George has banded the girls together for an important personal cause. She goes on to describe what she calls the "Rogers incident of 2006" in which the phone company attempted to convince her to drop her landline coverage and purchase a Wi-Fi package.

"I remember just feeling physically sick at the thought of it. How am I supposed to dial in and vote for the best performer each week on Dancing with the Stars? How will I call in and find out what movies are playing at the theatre? What if there's an emergency and someone needs to reach me after I get home from work? Of course, they then tried to convince me to buy a cell phone, too! These companies can be so greedy!"

And that's why, when George read the headline about Yahoo, she finally reached her breaking point.

"What's next? Are they going to try and say nobody needs MapQuest or Ask Jeeves either? You've got to draw the line somewhere and let these companies know what people REALLY want."

After only two short weeks, George is happy to report she got over 30 new ladies from her Weight Watchers group to meet her at the library and sign up for Yahoo email accounts, and was then able to reach an agreement with the company to keep the site running at least until the end of 2017.