Yes many sites do require that, but Yahoo? I expected a little more from them, does it even make any sense to have such password requirements anymore? Also, I can't tell for sure if the phone verification is optional, it could be required for new sign ups randomly. Yea I most definitely can, but I will definitely don't feel like logging in anymore.

The requirements are reasonable in my opinion: the length range prevents too short of passwords, and the variety of characters range prevents some of the weakest passwords: 'password' for example. Not allowing whitespace in passwords can prevent a lot of headaches - say I wrote a password on a piece of paper. How do I represent two spaces vs. one space? Nicer for Yahoo to not have to have to deal with that type of problem from angry users.

All CAPTCHAS are a pain, but the reasons for having one are fair.

The phone verification is a more interesting issue. When I created an account yesterday, it never asked anything about phone verification. And some people don't perhaps have phone access who could be trying to register? If it is randomly mandatory, that's a decent pain and privacy issue. I'm guessing it's probably opt-in or opt-out though

Do I agree with all their decisions? Not really, but I can see why they were made