Edit: I’ve filtered this off the public view since I’ve directed Yahoo at my journal
Edit:2005.06.16: This post was friends only. It is now public as the Yahoo situation has been remedied.
It has now been two days. In the past two days I have received 6 automated mailings that have tried to scrape and compare data from my replies to compare with minutia about my past.
The way that Yahoo verifies an account is to send you an automated email asking you for data about when you registered for the account. This data is then scraped and compared. Anything you write seems to be utterly ignored.
When I worked for a company in San Diego I created this Yahoo acct. Not fully trusting Yahoo at the time I may or may not have used completely accurate data. I probably figured if I could trust the service I would eventually set the data to being accurate. Granted, there’s also the fact that I may have used accurate data for my work place.
See, this was 5 years ago. I’ve moved 4 time since then. I’ve been laid off twice. My old company email (that I’ve used to register data with services) has since gone under. And to make matters worse, I’ve changed my name.
So far any attempts to talk to a live person have been fraught with everything Yahoo can send against me. “We don’t have a phone number there.”
So, today… Today I declare war on the system. I will call and continue to call and demand supervisor upon supervisor. Today, I will do what I’ve done in the past in these situations.
I will make a complete and public log of my experience. The log will be for public consumption. I welcome anyone to see how a company the size of Yahoo works in this situation.
Does it matter? Does this David and Goliath situation have any real hope of accomplishing anything? Doesn’t matter.
You do what you have to do. You find a purpose and work towards it. Futility isn’t a consideration. Today I think I understand the difference between working for a goal and not working towards the lust of result.
This account is mine. At least as legitimately as any online resource is to a person. I have more people who will say that life_magick is mine than any faker can muster to say it’s not the case. I’m getting back what belongs to me.
This is not the end of the story. It’s just starting.
I did get mine back finally this morning. It took about 11-12 emails. So hang in there.
Did you have a secret question and answer? That is how they finally let me get mine back, I think.
Were you able to remember…
the question as well as the answer?
They asked me for the question and answer. I’ve come up with more secret questions over the last 5 years than I can think of. I told them I had no idea which secret question it’d be but I’d probably be able to answer the one I put in without difficulty
Re: Were you able to remember…
I said I had no idea if I’d ever had a secret question. They sent me the secret question and I replied with the answer, then I got no reply for 12 hours but then they said they had fixed it so I could change my info.
When I sent them the answers to things they wanted, like birthdate, zip, etc., I sent them both what I think I rmemeber it being when I first signed up, and also what I had listed most recently. I just kept sending them as much as I could remember and eventually they fixed it. I think they are swamped with this, abd thus the delayed responses.
I think I may go to wikipedia and make an account so I can edit the “phishing” entry, because everything I read about these mentiuons eamils, and I have never been taken in by a phishing email, but no one seems to have mentioned this happening through im. It is sort of a combination of a worm and a phishing scam.
FWIW – it doesnt’t appear the phishers in this case even read my email. Nothing was sent or deleted from my acocunt in the two days they had it. I think it is just a script that is someone’s idea of “fun”.
Anyway, keep trying, they are slow, but if they gave me my account back (I, like you, have moved multiple times since opening my account and was unsure of all the original info I put on there) they are likely to do the same for you if you are persistent enough.
Oh and…
Not sure which form you filled out, the first few I filled out weren’t helpful, but the one which I think got the best attention was here – http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/security/cgi_feedback. I also got a human response by emailing account-security-help@cc.yahoo-inc.com, rather than just an automated form letter.
Hope this helps.
Am following this closely. Go kick their asses.
rip the system!
I’m beating my head …
against the GoDaddy door about something similar. If only they would use their power for Evil.