Yahoo's disastrous "Security" improvement

Yahoo has been asking me to change my password, which I finally did yesterday. It said I had a strong password.

My address book was them immediately spammed with everyone in it sent a link to a malicious site.

Today I try to sign in with my new ID and cannot sign in no matter how many times I try. Finally I am locked out of the account for 12 hours. It says I can only get back in sooner if they can email me a code to the primary email account they have on file - the very yahoo address they've locked down!


What kind of idiocy is this? This is my primary mail account where I do all of my business. I cannot go even a few hours without access to it, much less 12 hours. Why would there be no other way to revive it when they have my phone and an alternate email, besides mailing to the email account they've locked down?

Their phone help disconnects after holding for 20 minutes, the online Help pages fail to load when I try to email. I get the impression they are under massive attack.

That is a wild thing to happen,
I gave up on Yahoo long ago,
But all alternative email addresses I've ever used go to separate email services,
Gmail reset goes to Hotmail,
Hotmail reset goes to gmail,..
None of them have a phone number gmail wants one badly I wonder why with their new tracking features

There's usually an option to either send the reset via text or email obviously I choose email but very bazar your predicament is

gregrocker said:

Resolved: I finally got the page to load at help.yahoo.com/Identity to fill out an email form with my alternative email addy, to which they immediately sent a working password change link that got me back into my account. I'm still not sure what happened to my "strong" password but I've changed it back to the old one that never had problems before.


I'm not ready to give up on them although there are periodic glitches. The fact they had the form to link my alternative email address in real time to get a password reset on a locked account is smart, but why not send it when the account is locked since they had it on file?

Got the same! Yahoo is forcing me to change my password and if i do skip it, it does take ages to load the page. So i fake changing password and go upper right my name to access directly to my account.

It's always tough to switch to another email service for business or even personal,
But man it's really tough relying on a free service without phone support for a business,

I made a choice a while back the only reliable support for business is one you pay for like in my case Hostmonster which is a phone call away,
pop3 to a freebie for mobile alerts,
I'm actually relying to much on gmail for mobile,
I might have to switch it to Hotmail or outlook.com soon if Google keeps asking for a phone number
Glad you got it straighten out fairly quickly too

gregrocker said:

...Their phone help disconnects after holding for 20 minutes, the online Help pages fail to load when I try to email. I get the impression they are under massive attack.

Where did you find phone help?

Yahoo had been jacked up ever since the Google refugee, Marissa Mayer, took over Yahoo and tried to make Yahoo mail into Gmail.

Yea that is one odd item in the mix with Yahoo

I know what Google wants it for
Google app "Nearby" - your presence will be known

I used Yahoo for ages, then dumped it when they made some wholesale changes to their GUI. I switched to Mail.com a year ago and have been delighted with it. I should have changed years ago.
Last week when I wanted to try for a Yahoo account for a backup email service, there's no way I can create a new account without giving them a cellphone number?! Oh, no you don't. Even if I had a cellphone, Yahoo (and Gmail) wouldn't get my number if they held a gun to my head.