Deleted your Yahoo! Account? Check again…
After the multiple Yahoo! data breaches and debacle last year, I, along with many decided to delete my Yahoo account. Yahoo! News
This was an ancient email I had setup, had no personal data in it anymore and had a unique password. But it’s a part of my digital footprint that I no longer required and decided, given the horrible security practices going on @ Yahoo (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/yahoo-hack-security-of-one-billion-accounts-breached) to vote with my account and have it removed.
Thankfully this was a fairly straight-forward process, just hit up the link below, verify who you are, read the T&C’s, enter the CAPTCHA and you’re done.
The following appears on the page -
In most cases your account will be deactivated and then deleted from our user registration database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity. Additionally, due to the limited number of names available, we may allow other users to sign up for and use your current Yahoo! ID and profile names after your account has been deleted.
During this time, you can actually log back into your account (not great, but understandable give the above timelines) so I re-did the account removal and decided to set a reminder for 91 days to check that my account had been blown away.
That day happens to be today, and whatta-ya-know, I was able to login (after verifying with 2FA) and access my account.
My Questions/Suggestions for Yahoo!
- How long do users actually need to wait?
- Remove the approximate wording and add the maxium time needed to remove accounts from your systems.
- Why do you allow logins even when users have requested their account be removed?
- Ask for a backup email to send a confirmation that the account has been fully removed for piece of mind.
Follow Up, Next Steps
If you’re in the same boat (and I encourage all of you to check!), hit up the link below, sign in and navigate to Contact Us, Create or Delete Account, Unable to delete an individual account, Email. This will allow you to create a case and hopefully nip this in the butt!
My case is still pending, but I’ll throw an update down here when I know more.
Stay safe! =]
UPDATE 17/2/17 —
Well, it’s not great news, basically the worse case scenario in terms of getting things get tidied up… It seems checking your account is the worst thing to do (sorry!), see below —
If you re-login to your account (to you-know, check they have actually removed it) it will reset the timer and you will have to wait at least another 90 days.
I’ll throw another update below once they clarify if I have to re-do the deletion process, stay tuned!
2nd UPDATE 17/2/17 —
So this story comes to an end.
Do not check your account, if you do you, it will-
- Re-activate it immediately
- Remove the “flag for deletion”
- Have to go through the whole deletion part again!
Really can’t believe this whole process, what a mess! Be warned!
