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.