September 30, 2005- A hacker took it all and Yahoo did nothing to help me
On September 30, 2005 I was unable to log into my yahoo id. After trying my password for a few times, I realized that I was not typing my password wrong, there was a problem. Since I had an "alternate" id in yahoo, I contacted them to advise them to lock down my account due to the fact that a hacker had deleted much of the information under my public profile. I thought that after a few days I would be able to rectify the situation and get access to my id name. Sadly, I was not only traumatized by the invasion that took place, I was ignored and betrayed by yahoo and left out in the cold.
Of course, I do take comfort that this has happened to tons of other people besides myself so I don't feel personally singled out.
I do however come away from this experience much wiser. When you are offered a "free" email, it isn't really free. Eventually you will pay a very high price when you lose an entire address book of contacts. All I know is that there are many people who I cannot contact because I didn't save my address book on paper.
There are lots of people who think I am rude and uncaring because I haven't responded to their emails that I am unable to read. When the hacker took over my yahoo account, he also changed information that I needed to verify my identity with yahoo. Now my email with the Internet service provider that I have and I don't keep anything important on my email any longer. This capture of my identity was purely a sport and the hacker gained nothing but the satisfaction that he put a significant wrinkle in another person's life.
Will I let this poision me to electronic communications? For the most part, I have been able to move on but I would advise all yahoo users to seriously think about removing any emails that have personal information, passwords or such before the same thing happens to you. I was one of those people who thought it could never happen to me.