My Yahoo! Email Account was recently deactivated, blocking me from any access to my email messages, contacts, or calender. After a little leg work I was able to get the account back without any loss of the data. Here are some answers to questions that I initially had, and how I went about getting my account reactivated.
Why Was My Account Suspended?
Most likely you violated your Terms of Service (TOS) agreement with Yahoo!. Remember, under your TOS agreement your account can be shut down at anytime regardless of the circumstances. In my case, I believe that it was a chain email that I had forwarded to receipients that were on an email that was forwarded to me. The Yahoo! network considered me to be “spamming” other members so they shut down my account.
How Do I Get My Account Back?
Yahoo! does not make this information readily available on their website, but after digging around I found two ways that you can contact them to ask for an appeal and have your suspended account reactivated.
1) You can call 1-866-850-4303 to speak directly with an Account Verification Representative (open 6am to 6pm Pacific Standard Time).
2) You can fill out the form at this link to ask for an appeal of your account’s deactivation via email.
You may have to contact them more then once. Keep trying if they don’t reactivate your account the first time, if you believe you didn’t violate the TOS. Always be curteous when speaking with an associate, or in your email correspondence. They’ll be more likely to help you if you are pleasant to talk with.
I opted for option 2 and received a response (and an apology email) within 24 hours. Remember account deactivations can happen at anytime, and it is a good idea to store your email contacts in another email account so that you have a back-up should you loose access to your primary account. The same goes for account holders with Gmail, Hotmail, and other free email service providers as well. Gool luck and let me know if I can answer any more of your questions.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the info! My account got deactivated with VERY important information in it. I’ll be contacting them tomorrow morning when they open and hopefully something will work.
i can’t access my yahoo id….someone deactivate my id without any reason…plz do something 4 me…im very upset…Plz plz plz….k4nch@yahoo.com<<<<
I had my main yahoo account deactivated recently. I posted some apparently unwanted political opinions about South Africa. I think.
Or, I did some posts with my avatar as a famous comedian (copyrighted?)–and the posts were, although intelligent, obnoxious.
In any case, they deactivated my account without warning.
Now, I didn’t know they had done it. I just knew I couldn’t get into the account, so I freaked thinking I was hacked.
I quickly redirected all of my external information to another email account and later called Yahoo and talked to someone.
TOS violation.
The long and the short of it is, Yahoo basically lost a long-time customer in me. I had spent money through them buying different PPV stuff and what not. I also primarily used Yahoo for everything. I learned a hard lesson here.
My email (used for many, many years) is linked (as all of ours are) to our profiles to comment on news articles and all of that. I guess the only choice they have to to deactivate you entirely instead of just prevent you from posting on articles or something.
In any case, in the grand scheme of things, this is a very hard lesson. Now I will only use email I sponsor though another party (at my own expense). I am not upset that the account is closed and all of the email lost, but this is a hard, hard lesson for all of us.
When people talk about cloud computing, and doing all of your computer and file-based work online, where it’s saved online, and all of that, then just remember, if they boot you (for any reason, really, like posting unpopular opinions), you can basically lose everything, instantly.