Question about Yahoo

[Thager]

I have a free Yahoo email account and someone accessed it last week without m,y permission and deleted all of my saved emails. I have emailed Yahoo customer service for help and gotten a few automated responses so far. I also visited their Help service while waiting to hear back from customer service. Basically Help says that once emails are deleted from my account and from my Trash they are deleted from their server and therefore GONE. Is this true? Don't they keep some kind of backup?

Second question: Can Yahoo research who has accessed my account and give me their IP address? Is something like this also possible and how hard is it to do?

Relying on their response via email , since they don't have a telephone number, is leaving me with a hopeless feeling. Hope you guys can help.

[foxyloxley]

IF the account WAS tampered with :
then it is too late,
as stated, if sent to trash and deleted from there the mail is gone ..........

backups ??
they WILL have backups of the mail box
but who keeps a back up of the trash ?????

just open ANOTHER account, do not use the old one ...........or at the very LEAST change the PASSWORD
NEVER get too attached to an address

learn and move on
sorry, but that's your lot .......

any indications as to HOW they got in ?

1 - who else did you tell your password to ?
2 - who else has access to the PC you accessed the account with ?

1 - self explanatory, if someone else knows your password
2 - if someone else is using your PC, or you were on a PUBLIC PC [cafe etc] then you should have cleared the cache before you closed down [R/click Internet Explorer on the desktop > Properties > delete cookies / delete files [inc all offline content / clear history] that way you have cleaned your tail before the next one on follows you .......
PC's can [and do] remember passwords and pathways .......

[rapier57]

Also, it is a _free_ account, you get what you pay for. Yahoo will take minimal responsibility and provide just the basics.

If there is anything that was in your in-box that you think you need, you can always ask the sender to resend, if possible. Or something in your sent mail can sometimes be recovered by asking the recipient to send a copy back.

[Thager]

Thanks for the great stuff. I have changed my password...did that right away! It is possible that I inadvertantly forgot to completely sign out on a public computer cause I do travel a lot. I guess I can either live without the missing emails and ask for re-sends on the ones I have to have.

I am still wondering if Yahoo can tell who's been accessing my account and give me this evil person's IP address. Do you guys know if that's possible?

[morganlefay]

Exactly what would you do with that IP address

Just to clarify...it isnt the evil persons IP address...its the evil persons ISPs address...and if it was done at an internet caffe\public access computer..what good would it do

MLF

[Nokia]

9 times out of 10 when something like this happens you usually know the person.

They either know you well enough to guess your password - or well enough to know the answer to your secret question!

Pick a competley random password - not one you use for other things that your friends can find out.
Use a passphrase if possible - 1L0V3P1NK or something along them lines. This is a good practise to get into.

Use a question that is completly irrelevant:

Q:My favorite colour
A:Pink fury bannans

Anyone who knows you will enter your favorite colour bu the answer is something a million miles away!
Obviuosly use an answer that you will remember however!

Dont use your email password as you password for other things either:
I bet your AO password is the same one you used for your Yahoo account??

Anyone who has access to AO's database will be able to get your email address and try your password..... just using AO as an example, things like ebay,amazon, etc will have your email addy and your password -see what I am saying?

Always follow the correct sign out procedure and if you can delete the cookies when using a public machine!

[rapier57]

Originally posted here by morganlefay
Exactly what would you do with that IP address

Odd, it seems we've been here before! Deja 'vu all over again. There must be something somewhere that is telling folks that we all have this magical IP number that will identify us. Mark of the beast, so to speak. We have to find that source and kill it.

Thager, keep in mind that the likely scenario is that someone "coat-tailed" you on an open system and used your account. If Yahoo could capture the IP of the session where the nasty person used your account, it would be the same IP you were using when you accessed from that open system. The IP has to do with the machine, not the person.

The IP, even if it could be gleaned, will do you no good, so don't waste any more CPU cycles worrying about it.

Hope that helps. BTW, don't just change your password this time, plan to change it on a regular basis. Like after every trip where you may have used a public system.

[Thager]

bummer...you guys are right about the "mark of the beast" myth. Even Yahoo tells you to trace the IP address in emails to find out who it is.

Thanks for the help....funny, it seems I believe and trust you guys much more than the Yahoo Help dept.

[mikester2]

But surely they mean to trace the IP if you want to find out a general idea of where email came from and not to find out who was accessing your account.

My take on this is that you don't have any hope of getting your emails back if they have been fully deleted from your account both due to technical and business issues. Firstly it is highly lightly that the storage used to store your emails will have been overwritten with someone else data by now. Turnaround of space of large scale storage is normally pretty fast.

Secondly even if Yahoo did make backups or have your files stored somewhere that they could restore them, it would make no business sense to spend their time tracking down your lost emails, restoring them and putting them back in your account, after all you have paid nothing for this service and that would probably take a little time. This is the same reason they are unlightly to research into access logs for you.

So basically as was said before, learn from this and either upgrade/change your web mail to a provider that will provide active file backups (this will cost) or maybe connect using an email client and download and make your own backups in the future.

Something like this happens to most people at one time or another so try not to feel to bad about it , o and ya really really really change your password to a secure password.

Good luck buddy.

[Cider]

If you dont sign out for these type of sites is is possible to still be logged in for the next person? Sometimes when I come on to AO there are other people logged in. I always log out straight away but what if I started tampering with passwords etc, would it work ?