Everybody knows about Yahoo! It is an all-purpose company with interests and investments in several branches and departments in the online world. It is a search engine, a news hub, a place to watch (and play Fantasy) sports, to organize your email, and virtually anything you can think ok.
It also has products such as Yahoo! ID, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Address Book, Yahoo! Small Business, Yahoo! GeoCities, Yahoo! Briefcase, My Yahoo! HotJobs, and Flickr, which is a photo library and manager. Yahoo is also a media juggernaut with sections about fashion, sports, entertainment, film, and much more.
Yahoo!’s Privacy Violations
While the success and worldwide reach of Yahoo can’t possibly be denied, the company has also had its fair share of criticism and controversy over the years, especially in recent times. Some users have opted to migrate to other platforms.
Why? For instance, the repeated data and privacy breaches that the online enterprise has been involved in. Recently, more than 30 million accounts have been accessed without authorization by using “forged” cookies, not to mention over a billion accounts in a couple of earlier violations of privacy.
As online and data privacy reach another level of relevance these days, Yahoo! users haven’t been shy about showing their concern levels on different social media outlets and networks. The importance of anonymity and have no one looking at your content grows by the hours. No one likes to be spied.
If that weren’t enough, Yahoo! has been under recent scrutiny about a supposedly built tool to search email of customers and users. The resource, allegedly, had been requested by the United States government. It is another element that adds to the one billion hacked accounts.
If you care about your data privacy, it is more than evident that it is hard to keep using Yahoo! If you are going to trust your private emails to a platform, make sure it doesn’t comply with any data retention or sharing government laws.
A VPN for Yahoo!
Before you delete your Yahoo! account, you should know that, if you really love your Yahoo! products (let’s face it, they are numerous and most of them are excellent,) there is a way to use them without the ever-present danger of an information leak or data privacy breach.
Virtual Private Networks, such as IPBurger VPN, can create a virtual tunnel in which your shared data (including Yahoo! Mails) and IP address will travel to remote servers, away from any ISPs and the government.
IPBurger VPN is known for responsible management of users’ data and online assets. It offers dedicated IP addresses as well as shared ones for the customer to choose and configure their desired encryption.
Deleting your Yahoo! account
If you still want to delete your Yahoo! account, we would understand, though. Not only that, but we will also help you achieve your goal. Doing it is quite simple, and it won’t take you more than a few minutes of your precious time.
You will begin at Yahoo!’s “Terminating your Yahoo! Account” page. The service doesn’t put up much of a fight, either, so if you want out, they will respect your decision.
To delete your Yahoo! account:
- Go to the Terminating Your Yahoo! Account page.
- Sign in to your account with your Yahoo! credentials.
- Write the CAPTCHA code to let the system know you are human.
- Choose YES and your Yahoo! account will be deleted.
- If the process has been successfully completed, you will see a confirmation message.
Your Yahoo! ID could be used in the future by someone else, to the contrary of what happens in some networks. Doing this will erase your ID, and data from the following apps: Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Address Book, Yahoo! Small Business, Yahoo! GeoCities, Yahoo! Briefcase, My Yahoo!, HotJobs, and Flickr account (including photo library, stats, and metadata.)
The process can take up to three full months. If you want to make your Yahoo! data disappear sooner, you will have to manually delete data in your apps, including contacts, Flickr pictures, emails, and more.
The system explains what data they may store for future use in the Yahoo!’s Data Storage and Anonymization support page.