For some truly unknown and unfathomable reason, YahooMail killed my 9-year-old+ (created in 1998 or so) email account that I had been using as my "core" email address since that time and I'm at a loss as to what to do, they simply "deactivated" my account without any warning whatsoever and for no apparent reason since I never used to spam from or anything similar.

I found their form online that you're supposed to fill out EXACTLY to request help and/or "reactivation" but the thing is, they want your EXACT information that you filled originally, and we're talking nine years ago now, such as the security question you chose, the answer to it, your exact zip code (back then?, you're kidding me, right?), etc. and they make it very clear if ALL the info provided doesn't match perfectly, they won't respond.

Considering that I had some very important saved messages in my files there as well as some equally important email addresses in my address book that were in this YahooMail account but nowhere else, I'm truly at a loss as to what to do next to try to get Yahoo to restore/recover this account . . . help, suggestions anyone?, Thanks in advance!, Yours, Kent

Yikes. Normal channels probably won't work. Maybe find some Yahoo! employee blogs and try getting a more personal approach?

__________________
Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.

Hate to say it, but Yahoo has a nasty habit of deleting accounts, and these deletions sometimes seem to be random. Making it even worse, when they came out with unlimited storage, they announced they would be scanning e-mails for "abuse" and delete accounts based on contents of e-mails.

__________________
The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

My son very recently could not remember his password after reformatting his hard drive. He wrote to Yahoo and they were very helpful. He could not remember his security question either. He very quickly got into his email. Maybe explaining to Yahoo just may have some good results for you.

__________________
Kevin

http://www.quickplayhorseracingsoftware.com/

Went through the same thing trying to wrestle my main site domain from a terrible service known as Melbourne IT who like to give people from the USA a very hard way to go.

I called Yahoo and they were the most helpful group I have ever met. I needed to know the credit card number from when I originally purchased the domain from Yahoo years before and they walked me through how to find my Yahoo Wallet.

The coolest thing was I did not know I had a Yahoo Wallet

Give them a call.. you'll love their service!

__________________
Create Your List!!!
Make Money With Twitter!!!

Um, you depended on an outside source to save/back up YOUR stuff?

If you ARE reinstated I would highly suggest stripping out everything of value, buying your own domain name and hosting, and setting up an email with pop/smtp, where you have control of downloading and backing up your email, and don't have to worry about an ISP buyout or other madness.

__________________
Custom WordPress Themes, CubeCart templates, ModX templates, Movable Type templates. ~ B1tchslappin Political Blog ~ GreenSpeak Community Action

Yahoo's not the only ASP who has this problem. I've had clients experience the same with MSN, both paid for MSN & free Hotmail accounts, as well as paid for AOL accounts.

Whether or not you can resolve the issue is going to depend solely on your being sufficiently persistent so as to eventually deal with someone who both knows how to help & gives a damn.

Good Luck.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

You mean they keep credit card numbers ON FILE ON THE SERVER? Ack! Be afraid. Be very afraid!

__________________
Custom WordPress Themes, CubeCart templates, ModX templates, Movable Type templates. ~ B1tchslappin Political Blog ~ GreenSpeak Community Action

I have a Yahoo/Prodigy account but almost never go to the Yahoo email site to get my email. Why do that when you can get an automatic download into your Outlook or Outlook Express mailbox right on your desktop. That way everything is on your hard drive. Suggest that you configure your email in a similar fashion. Good luck and hope that it all works out for you. BTW, from what others have said about Yahoo being a big and a friendly help, I can confirm that.

Peace,
Calius

Sem,

I looked and looked and couldn't find any contact numbers for Yahoo's HelpDesk or such, begging a favor, would you happen to have them handy or can post back the URL of the page with the number(s) on them? I'd be ever so greatful, Thanks.

The killer in all this, the reason needing my "hkcraig@yahoo.com" email account re-established is that is has been the primary email contact address for my monthly column on project management for "Contractor" magazine:

Craig on Project Management : Archives

since 1998 and because of that it has been published in the footer of every column since then and will be floating around forever because of that . . . my editor at "Contractor" was understanding but wasn't too happy that it happened even though it wasn't my fault.

Yahoo! - Yahoo! – Address and Phone Number

Not to worry as if you give them a call, they will be able to assist you and get your account re-instated. But as said by others, I wouldn't want to be dependent on Yahoo mail when comes to contact addresses or any other important info. I would rather save it on my local harddrive and backup on CDs. You will never know such thing like what is happening to you and others.

__________________
Create Wealth & Fortune | Signup Free Email | MLM Business

Try calling Yahoo Customer Service at 1-866-562-7219

To prevent this from happening again, I also suggest that you upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus.

__________________
You'll love this free traffic site...now it's getting me 2,000 targeted hits every day.
http://www.traffficswarm.com/wpw.html

Forget yahoo pro, I would only pay that fee just to have forwarding or pop3, since your old yahoo address is valuable. Gmail has tons of neat features, plus I get the feeling that they won't be deleting your acc't so quickly. They were after all, the first email system that recommended people never delete any email as well as give away one gigabyte of storage.

If you don't want to pay just for a forward account, then use FreePOPs, setup to automatically login and download your email to a desktop email (it acts as a local pop3 proxy), then set your desktop email program to forward all that mail to a gmail account.
You might want a separate machine dedicated for this.

Then in gmail you can see only the mail to that address using their powerful filtering to label it.

In your case, the filter would probably be
from:xxxxx@gmail.com and
contains the text: forwarded message
or
subject: fwd:


I would hope only a one-way hashed version is stored a la unix crypt(3), and then only the last four digits. That's the standard for the pci industry, I'm assuming?


melbourne it is actually the company that yahoo outsources their domain/dns hosting to. Just do a whois on any yahoo hosted domain, you'll see.

Did the wallet have money it in? It would be spooky if it did.

That is the standard, but if he was able to view the card number, it wasn't a one way hash.

__________________
The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

Hi,

I have Paypal send orders into my paid host email account and then forwarded to my Yahoo account so I have a backup. Once in a great while one does not get forwarded but the orders are printed from Paypal which is the deciding factor anyway.

I had a couple of old yahoo accounts that were also inactive but I just reactivated them.
I don't remember them asking any security questions. If they did I guess I remembered it.

The amount of passwords and id's it seems we need to remember nowadays is overwhelming.

__________________
Laundry Bag Store Online
Laundry Bag Lots

Here's the connection between Yahoo! and Melbourne IT:
Yahoo! Small Business

Thanks all for your messages. I too had an issue with Yahoo - I had a bunch of personal messages saved on Yahoo, and thought they would be able to remain there for quite some time. I also had groups that I had formed on Yahoo, and those went too - all for some "unknown" reason - I spoke to the folks at Yahoo customer care, and all they said was read section 6 of their terms of service, and you'll figure out what happened, or for more specific reasons, file litigation.

Lot of help they are!

__________________
JG
Credit Cards, NJ - Your Smart Choice for Merchant Services

I don't mean to be cruel but the old cliche "you get what you pay for" is true with free email providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail.

They've all had their share of screwups -- i run a few discussion lists and 99% of complaints come from people with one of those big 3. They're fine for personal use but i would never rely on them for a business or long-term contacts.

I second the idea to pay for an account where you can do your own backups.
My preferred method is via IMAP instead of POP -- that way i automatically have a copy on both the server and my own harddrive(s) at all times.

And Thunderbird is awesome because the inbox and other folders are in plain text -- you don't have to do any special conversion like you do with LookOut (M$ Outlook / Express).

Thunderbird
Add in the Sunbird plug-in and its feature set is the same as Outlook roughly speaking. I can't tell the difference from a practical point of view.

At least with AOL you pay for it and they give you POP or IMAP access to your email account if you wish to use a 3rd party email client like Thunderbird.

I hope this helps.

Use gmail, with multiple, cascading backups. Eg:

main account forwards to backup1, backup1 forwards to backup2, backup2 forwards to backup3, etc....

Each month or year add another backup to ensure they are spread across all the datacenters.


Of course, if you run out of space, well

Better yet, pay for a professional e-mail service, such as that provided by USA.net.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

I second that motion to pay for a professional service! Check out SpamCop.net - Beware of cheap imitations for some awesome email services.

Net@ddress's USA.net e-mail service includes BrightMail spam filtering & reporting services as part of the package.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

Man it means I'm right if I keep all my mail on my computer (use POP).
I didn't even know it can happen that a so-long-existing account may disappear...
Nightmare...

free account is always unreliable, luckily I didn't store any important files inside

__________________
Top 5 Affiliate Programs Reviews

Finding the help page with the phone number to call is difficult if not impossible, I think you need to find the page with the correct email address somewhere in help, mail them and then they will send you a phone number to call, or you can try: 800-318-0870 for the billing department, at least they should be able to route your call.

Ykes, this is a seriously old thread. By now your deleted Yahoo account should be nearly ten years old and I don't suppose you'll be needing that number. But how did it all work out hkentcraig?

I'll have to join some mild critics here and to ask why you didn't download all your messages if they were so important to you?
Why depending on a third party mail provider in the first place?
As BJ said, get your own domain name and keep your e-mail accounts in your hands.
Good luck though in retieving your mail.

__________________
Impossible? You just underestimate the time.

Unfortunately, many hosts' e-mail services are primitive at best. Here too, like the free e-mail accounts used by many, you get what who pay for. Hosting firms tend to select a 3rd party service that provides e-mail services at the lowest possible cost.

Better to use an ASP that specializes in providing professional full featured e-mail service, such as USA.Net, Inc. Dollar for dollar, such ASPs provide better service than do hosting firms.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

Had an issue with yahoo myself, good luck trying to get that fixed, not sure if its worth the time.

__________________
Baitnhook Fishing Supplies
Thetoolworkshop.comAnglerAmerica

Never ever allow someone else to control anything that you will need forever..

I still have an old domain registered for a single email address that my wife used when she was publishing doctoral thesis' work.. She still gets emails about that work some 18 years later and I will pay for that domain till the end of time for just that one email address.. $10 to register the domain.. Tack it on to a VPS account that I already have and forget about it..

__________________
Steve : Animal Charms Animal Jewelry | Fishing Blog
I'm smelling a whole lot of if coming off of this plan.

I've had Yahoo mail for years now, and it has gone through a lot of Yahoo updates; but I didn't experience any problems with it. it would help if you can call them or express the real situation and accentuate that you have important files stored in that email account.

__________________
Lease a Car
Car Leasing Directory

Really? strange...You are bad luck.

__________________
High-powered Free Shopping Cart software for small biz

Take it easy here buddy. The member has a serious problem and you are telling that he is bad luck? WTF???

__________________
"Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction." Jeff Atwood
SEO Workers - Search Engine Optimization Consulting Company | SEO Analysis Tool | Webnauts Net SEO

The only thing "strange" here is your post.

I've double-checked my birth certificate, and find that it says naught of my having been granted telepathic powers, so I'll need you to explain your intended meaning(s).

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

Holy shit. You scare me now man. Thanks for sharing and the valuable information.

__________________
"Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction." Jeff Atwood
SEO Workers - Search Engine Optimization Consulting Company | SEO Analysis Tool | Webnauts Net SEO

Its really bad thing from yahoo. More ever if we use public email id we should be bit careful. I always prefer to configure public email ids in my outlook if that public email ids support.

While signing everyone need to agree yahoo terms and conditions. It means clearly we are giving right to do anything.

Try to consult yahoo employees over phone or mail. All the best

__________________
http://hipaacompliancesoftware.net/

I asked around and I was told that you can write to yahoo customer care and they respond as well. Did you try already?

__________________
"Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction." Jeff Atwood
SEO Workers - Search Engine Optimization Consulting Company | SEO Analysis Tool | Webnauts Net SEO

I'd be scared too, were it not for the egregious amount of bad luck that I've been having for several months now.

As it is, Emilyecho's incantation bothers me not.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

Sorry to hear that brother.

Thanks God man! Now I feel better.

__________________
"Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction." Jeff Atwood
SEO Workers - Search Engine Optimization Consulting Company | SEO Analysis Tool | Webnauts Net SEO

Hi guys,

Do you think that type of problem can happen to a Gmail account too? I currently keep all my mail there, using its POP downloader to get mail from other accounts too, and I'm kinda scared about what happens if the account goes away...

Most assuredly it can; given sufficient time, that which is not impossible is inevitable.

Google is no different than any other Application Service Provider (ASP); and, like other ASPs, they've already had several instances of service interruptions, file corruptions, permanently lost files, etal..

So, the question is not whether or not such a problem can occur, but rather what leverage you will have toward getting it resolved if and when it occurs.

With a paid service, the ASP has both a contractual obligation to provide the promised service, and a desire to retain you as a paying customer; under a free service, the former is absent, and the latter not necessarily sufficiently strong for your getting prompt and due attention.

If your e-mail service is mission critical, then you should seek out and use a paid service, one provided by an ASP who specializes in providing communications services, such as USA.net.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com