Email Lock-out!

March 26, 2007 8:44 AM

Forgot my Yahoo password and login help is useless. How can I get back into my email?

I received an email from ebay stating that someone had been accessing my (seldom used) ebay account, and that it was suspended. Their email seemed to imply that my ebay account as being accessed through my Yahoo email.

So I changed my password. I thought I remembered what I changed it to: "GenericPassword01," but apparently that's not it or there has been some other kind of snafu. I have tried various permutations of "GenericPassword01" with no success.

As it began as an anonymous "throwaway" email account, I didn't correctly fill in my address/birthday etc so I can't use that to get the password back. The throwaway account has become my public account for paypal, ebay, amazon, etc. and isn't quite so disposable any more.

Any suggestions?

posted by MasonDixon to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I have no experience with Yahoo but I was in a similar situation to yours with my Hotmail account a few years back. I was able to speak to one of their support staff via email and provide details of what was in the account, and I got mine back that way. It might be worth finding a help address and emailing them.
posted by fire&wings at 8:56 AM on March 26, 2007

Are you sure you aren't reading a phishing email?
posted by rhizome at 9:00 AM on March 26, 2007

Response by poster: I don't believe it was phishing, as I was directed to the legitimate ebay security center.

The issue here in any case is the problem with my YAHOO email password.
posted by MasonDixon at 9:12 AM on March 26, 2007

I assume you've gone through this?

If they keep requesting your address and birthday, but you used fake ones that you can't remember, you're basically hooped. I think fire&wings is right: you need a live human being from Yahoo on your side.

This happened to me with my Yahoo account about five years ago. I couldn't solve it. I lost the account.
posted by Milkman Dan at 9:18 AM on March 26, 2007

Response by poster: Yeah, I've been through the login help and gotten redirected to the unhelpful FAQ/ask a question bit and gotten the useless automated reply from customer service.
posted by MasonDixon at 10:20 AM on March 26, 2007

I lost a years-old account this way too. Funny thing was - I hadn't changed the password; the system just THOUGHT it had changed. (It was strong enough that it's unlikely anyone actually guessed it.) Since I couldn't remember the zip code where I was when I actually created the account, many moves ago, I couldn't provide the necessary info. Nobody I talked to on the phone would help.
posted by aberrant at 11:31 AM on March 26, 2007

Did you try your old password? If something went wrong with the password change then it's possible it never changed (more likely then it getting changed to something completely random, at least).
posted by anaelith at 5:14 PM on March 26, 2007

If you're using Firefox, and had it set to remember passwords, you might be able to access it at Tool/options/privacy/passwords
posted by Neiltupper at 6:29 PM on March 26, 2007

I've gotten those - definitely phishing. NEVER click on anything in an email. If you must go to check it out, open a new browser window and type the URL in yourself.

Often the phish email will put an identical-looking page up for you to enter your information. Doesn't mean you're actually on Ebay. You may have invertantly given away your Yahoo password by checking it out...

Still, best of luck sorting it out.
posted by Aquaman at 6:59 PM on March 26, 2007