I, an idiot, have locked myself out of my Flickr page

July 19, 2007 3:29 PM

Here's one for the bad irony files. I seem to have screwed myself thoroughly on the whole Flickr-->Yahoo transition. Anyone got advice on how to get genuine help from Yahoo "support"?

Disclaimer: although I'm not happy with the whole forced-Yahoo-signup thing, this is obviously totally my fault. You're free to tell me what an idiot I am, but I promise you, I already know.

So. I waited until the last minute to sign up for a Yahoo login. And did so in the midst of preparing to move back from abroad. After it was over I could access all my Flickr pages as previously, so I (foolishly) assumed that my new login info was saved in my Firefox preferences.

When I went to log in to Flickr from my work computer back in the US, it became apparent that I had actually been logging automatically through my old, pre-Yahoo-signup Flickr cookie (?!) and that, when I went to track down the actual Yahoo login info on my laptop, that cookie evaporated.

What I thought was my Yahoo password turns out not to be. Nor does any other permutation of letters and numbers that I can think of. Nor (and here's where the "I'm an idiot" part really gets going) does any of the personal info that I might have entered seem to work on the password reminder page. Picking the two countries and four postal codes I might have entered plus my real (and typical fake) birthdate in every possible combination does nothing.

So, I followed the Yahoo instructions and appealed to their tech support, who fired back at me canned responses about how to type in my password ntil I gave up whimpering. I need someone at Flickr/Yahoo to either reset my password manually and send the information to the email address that's been associated with the account from the start or make it possible to associate my old Flickr account with a new Yahoo account.

Making someone in that organization give a damn, however, seems well nigh impossible. Any suggestions about how to do this? The Flickr boards strike me as an option, though I'll have to make another dummy account and try to convince someone that I'm not a phisher, which seems unlikely. I also have a harddrive backup that probably has the original Flickr cookie stored on it, but I don't think that's going to get me through the Yahoo gate.

I've got 3 years of photos and a decent amount of personal investment stored at that site. I'm pretty sure I've screwed this one irreparably, but if someone knows how I might fix this, I'd love to hear it.

posted by felix betachat to computers & internet (11 answers total)

So, you're in this situation?
posted by vacapinta at 3:51 PM on July 19, 2007

When my yahoo email (of 8+ years) had its password mysteriously changed, I couldn't get a single human response from Yahoo!.. I suspect your experiences might be similar.

The worst part was that my "alternate address" received an email notification that the password had been changed, and I noticed an IP address at the bottom of the message. While it did not explain what the IP address indicated, I had a suspicion that it was the machine that originally reset the password. I tried this on another yahoo account and, indeed, this was the case, so I had evidence as to who changed my password!! (A Comcast IP out of Long Island).

As I said, however, I couldn't even find a human at Yahoo, so I lost the email for good.

Sorry to give such unhelpful advice.
posted by mbatch at 3:55 PM on July 19, 2007

This may be of some assistance
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 3:56 PM on July 19, 2007

Create another account and contact Flickr support not Yahoo support with the details you have given here. They will give you a better turnaround time. Its not just a matter of a Yahoo id, its a matter of getting your Flickr account back.
posted by vacapinta at 4:00 PM on July 19, 2007

[i work for flickr]

contact flickr customer case here and explain your situation:
http://flickr.com/help/contact/
posted by iamcal at 4:06 PM on July 19, 2007

iamcal: That was my first move (I'm Flickr Case 294737). The initial (very quick!) reply said that it was impossible for someone on your end to manually reset the password. After that, I got several notes about how to locate the password reset page, which is not really my problem here. I've been waiting a week for a reply to my last note.

vacapinta: thanks, I missed that thread. That is, pretty much, the boat I'm in too. I can't really tell if there's a difference between Flickr support and Yahoo support. In any case, contacting support through Flickr got me a brief human reply and then a bunch of form notes.
posted by felix betachat at 4:22 PM on July 19, 2007

I talked to Flickr customer support when I had this problem and they told me I was screwed, since Yahoo were the only people who could help me and they don't respond to emails. I offered to show up at their office with my passport and birth certificate and they said sorry, no can do, i was out of luck. so that account basically got written off. Not what you want to hear, I know.
posted by luriete at 4:48 PM on July 19, 2007

bah, that sucks! we're working on making a self-serve tool that will allow you to regain access to your account. i'll post back here when i have more info. all is not lost :)
posted by iamcal at 5:00 PM on July 19, 2007

we're working on making a self-serve tool that will allow you to regain access to your account.

Best of luck trying to protect us from ourselves! I got an email from Ben at Flickr 20 minutes ago, who helped me associate my account with a new yahoo ID.

It's a little strange: for whatever reason, yahoo's login process doesn't trigger the autosave feature for passwords in Firefox, which I suspect was part of my original problem. Anyway, the new ID info is written in triplicate. Thanks very much for the help iamcal & Ben.
posted by felix betachat at 5:35 PM on July 19, 2007

for whatever reason, yahoo's login process doesn't trigger the autosave feature for passwords in Firefox

They embed "autocomplete=off" into the login form, presumably for security reasons. If you're the only person using your computer and you don't want it to do that, there's a greasemonkey script (you'll want to disable the silly alert).
posted by Partial Law at 5:47 PM on July 19, 2007

The whole Yahoo/Flickr merge has been a huge bung-fest, as far as I'm concerned.

I had a Flickr account. But, for whatever reason, when the merge happened, I was unable to simply log into that account. No...I first had to log-in with my Yahoo ID. But, once I did that, it never recognized my Flickr ID. It forced me to create a new Flickr account. Of course, the big brains at Yahoo insist that you can't use your Yahoo ID name for the new Flickr account...and my original Flickr account ID is, of course, already taken...by me.

Bah.

What is it with Yahoo, anyway? Seems like everything they touch becomes utterly fubar.

And, yeah, customer support at Yahoo is merely a concept...not something that's actually practiced.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:11 PM on July 19, 2007