Skip forever, Yahoo, I'm not giving you my fucking phone number!

The BBQ Pit
1

Fuck you, you idiots.

I have four Yahoo mail accounts (one of which is for the SDMB). About every three or four weeks I make the rounds to see what’s showed up. For more or less the last two years Yahoo has offered the opportunity to recover access to my account via text message to my phone. “We’ll only use this number for important messages.” Yeah, right.

For each account, every three weeks.

That doesn’t irritate me so much as this: this is what irritates me: this is what pisses me off: this is what grates on my last nerve: “Skip for now”.

Fuck you, Yahoo. I NEVER want this option. I am not going to give you my phone now; I will never give you my phone number ever; my heirs will not give you what my phone number used to be. Where is the “skip forever, fuck off and die in a fire, if you ever offer me this again your cats will be killed by snipers” option?

I’m just asking.

2

My AOL account* does the same thing. I wonder what would happen if I just dropped a fake number in?

*yes, I still have an AOL email address. It’s actually my main email address. I use it all the time but it gets almost no spam since I’ve been pretty good with it since I got it, what, 20+ years ago.

ETA, if you do that you better make sure to remember the number in case they ever need it for a password reset or something like that.

3

If you don’t pay for the product then YOU’RE the product.

A truism I read on this board recently.

4

When I log into my GMail account directly on the Internet, I am always presented with a fat banner across the top demanding my phone number.

Dicks.

5

Well, maybe they think you’ll change your mind someday.

6

That I haven’t seen. My gmail account came with the phone I bought about a year ago, and I do see ads. But that’s on the screen with my email, I can ignore them. The Yahoo bullshit is a full screen after I log in but before I get to my email. I have to either give my number, or select “skip for now”.

[more general]
Frankly, I’m getting tired of Yahoo. They’ve been my home page for more than a decade, primarily for news aggregation. Now their news is half ads, and half of the rest is International Business Times and Huffington Post type bullshit.

I’m about ready to dump them as a home page and as a news aggregator and as an email provider. They’ve really arrive at the point where all they want to give me is shit, and I’m not interested in eating it.

7

I miss iGoogle. I currently use this tool with firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fvd-speed-dial/

It provides a bunch of buttons for different websites. YMMV, etc.

8

Which would make me a product of the SDMB.

I now feel smuggly self superior and dirty at the same time.

9

^^^^^

There’s a relatively inexpensive way to fix that.

10

To set up new yahoo account now you must enter phone number and the same with youtube.Part of this is to stop spam.

They will send you activation code to your phone so putting in a fake phone number will not work.

I never had any of these problems two years ago.I use to have old yahoo account and youtube account but forgot it. And now I cannot make yahoo account or youtube account with out putting in phone number.

You can’t put in a fake number you need the activation code to make new account.

11

They legitimately won’t use the number for anything but emergency recovery. There’s not really that much else you can do with a phone number that wouldn’t immediately backfire.

Email providers are in a uniquely tough spot regarding account security. For every other service, if you’re locked out, the provider can recover your account by sending you an email. If your email account gets locked out, that’s it, it’s gone for good since there’s no way for the email provider to prove that you’re the rightful owner.

Because of how the web is structured, losing your email is hugely consequential. Most sites won’t let you change your linked email account without clicking a confirmation link to your old email. Some sites won’t let you change your password or delete your account without confirming via email.

Just enter the damn phone number and reply to a single text. Email providers are legitimately looking out for your best interests in this case.

12

Other option is to buy throw away phone to set up a account. If you don’t want them to have you number.

13

When they send a verification code to that number in a year’s time, your account is toast.

14

Google has had my phone number for several years. It’s not super-secret or anything. I don’t see the big deal.
The only time I ever get a text from them is if I change the password on my gmail (I have four accounts) for verification.

15

You need number to set up new account.Most of this is to stop spam.

16

How is this possible when YouTube is not owned by Yahoo, but by Google?

17

Read it again. He’s claiming that Yahoo and Google have similar policies. (I haven’t tried setting up a new account with either though, so I can’t vouch.)

Yahoo can be hacked, which would put the phone number in the hands of all manner of spammers and scammers.

It may indeed be smart to pass your phone number on to your mission-critical email account provider. Not so sure about the others.

18

This is the main reason why we still have a land line. I can give the number to anyone and not worry about it because we never answer that phone - everything goes to voice mail. And so far I haven’t found anything that requires we be able to receive a text, since not everyone has that ability yet.

19

His post wasn’t very clear on that point. In fact, since this is the Pit and I can say it here, most of sweat209’s posts make me go WTF?

20

I feel like I’m in school with a strict grammar teacher:eek::eek:

Any ways I had no need to activate my phone with yahoo.And if I made new account no matter what using a phone or not , :eek::eek::eek::eek:I will put it down on paper the username ,email and password
I’m not going to put much faith into yahoo to recover a forgotten username ,e-mail or password.