It’s been a while since we posted in ourAccount Deletion series, which deals with terminating accounts on popular services from brandslike Apple,Google,PayPal,Netflix,Spotify,Dropbox,Twitter,Viber,WhatsApp,Facebook,Instagramand many others. In this tutorial, you will learn how to close and terminate your personal account on Yahoo along with personal information and settings associated with it.
We’ll also show you how to remove your child’s account as part of your family account, educate you on Yahoo’s data retention policy and lay out any caveats you should be aware of ahead of breaking ties with Yahoo.
Think twice before closing your Yahoo account as you won’t be able to reactivate it. Once the account is terminated, all access, data and settings for your Yahoo ID will be lost forever.
Caveats about terminating Yahoo accounts
Before proceeding with account deletion, keep in mind the following:
To use Yahoo services again, you’ll need to create a new account from scratch.
What happens when I close my Yahoo account?
When you close your account, the following happens:
Once the account is closed, Yahoo cannot recover its contents or restore access to it.
Additionally, your contacts can still email your closed account for up to 90 days without getting a delivery error even though you can no longer access the emails.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, a position she has held since July 2012.
Considering the aforementioned caveats, you’re wholeheartedly recommended against deleting a Yahoo account before downloading your information first and informing friends and family that you’re about to close it.
Changed your mind about deactivating the account? Increase your privacy by editing yourYahoo Account Information, including your marketing preferences. Alternatively, modify information you have provided to the company through theYahoo products or servicesyou may use.
Yahoo’s data retention policy
Yahoo will permanently deactivate your account from its user registration database in approximately 90 days. The company says this delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity.
As per the officialData Storage and Anonymization policy, some information may be retained in Yahoo’s archived records even after your account is deleted.
Aside from logging searches and ad-related data, the system creates a temporary copy of everything you post to Yahoo to prevent accidental loss of information through a computer malfunction or human error.
Any data Yahoo copied as part of this process may remain in its backup storage “for some period of time” following your deletion request. “This may be the case even though no account information remains in our active user databases,” notes the firm.
As for logged searches, Yahoo stores this data in an identifiable form for up to eighteen months. IP addresses within search user log data are anonymized or deleted within six months from the time of collection.
More information is available in theYahoo Privacy Center.
How to download your Yahoo data
If you have important data in your Yahoo account that you’d like to keep for later, Yahoo provides options for saving some of this information onto your computer because you’ll lose it for good after the account is closed.
Unfortunately, Yahoo does not provide a web tool for downloading an archive of your Yahoo data, but you can manually download your emails, contacts, calendars, photos and other content.
Yahoo Mail
To download emails in your Yahoo Mail account, you can:
The last option is recommended for most users.
By setting up IMAP or POP, you can save your Yahoo emails in an email client on a computer or mobile device, such as Apple Mail, Spark, AirMail, etc.
Yahoo provides detailed step-by-step instructions forsetting up IMAP,as well as POP.
For IMAP, use the following settings to configure your email client or app:
Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
Your login info
For POP, use these settings:
Incoming Mail (POP) Server
To set up Yahoo Mail in Apple Mail for macOS the easy way, go toSystem Preferences → Internet Accountsand select theYahoooption in the righthand column.
You’ll be asked to enter your Yahoo credentials. If your account is protected with two-step verification, you may also be asked to enter a one-time verification code sent to your mobile phone number or pushed to your device as a notification.
After macOS verifies your Yahoo account credentials, up pops a list of stock apps you may use with the account. Deselect all boxes, but leave the one next toMailticked.
ClickDoneto finish adding your Yahoo account to Apple Mail.
As the last step, launch Mail and wait until the app finishes downloading your Yahoo emails, which may take a while depending on the number of messages in the inboxes, the size of attachments, the speed of your Internet connection and other factors.
No matter how you choose to access your Yahoo emails, you can safely terminate your account provided you have moved/forwarded messages you wish to keep to another email account, like Gmail or iCloud Mail.
To save copies of your Yahoo emails in another email account on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, go toSettings → Mail → Accounts → Add Account, tap theYahoooption in the list and follow the onscreen instructions.
You will then be able to access Yahoo Mail through Apple Mail for iOS, download desired messages to the device, forward them to another email address and more.
Yahoo Contacts
you may export your Yahoo Contacts and save them to a computer.
1)Point your desktop web browser ataddress.yahoo.comand log in with your user name and password to access Yahoo Contacts on the web.
2)ClickActionsin the toolbar at the top and chooseExportin the popup menu.
3)Select a format to export.
If you’re unsure, Yahoo recommends using Yahoo CSV.
4)ClickExport Now.
Your contacts on Yahoo will be saved in the Downloads folder on your computer and you can now import a saved .CSV or .VCF contact list file into Apple’s Contacts app.
Keep in mind that only the contacts you “own” will be exported. That is, contacts from accounts which are linked to your Yahoo account, like Facebook, won’t be exported.
Yahoo Calendar
Your appointments, schedules and calendars on Yahoo can be exported to an iCalendar (ICS) file format for effortless importing in other calendar apps.
1)Using your favorite desktop browser, visitcalendar.yahoo.com.
2)In the left panel menu, click the arrow next to the calendar you’d like to export. Now choose theExportoption in the popup menu.
Tip:If you don’t see your calendars listed, clickMy Calendarsin the leftmost column.
3)Click theExportbutton to confirm the operation and save a calendar file locally.
The calendar is saved in your computer’s Downloads folder. To use it in a Mac app that supports iCal files like Fantastical or Apple’s stock Calendar app, you’d choose theImportcommand from theFilemenu.
To import the calendar on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, use AirDrop to send the iCal file to an iOS device or email it to yourself and use iOS’s “Open In” command to open the .ICS attachment in Calendar for iOS.
Flickr photos
Deleting a Yahoo account automatically closes its underlying Flickr account and permanently deletes any photos and videos posted to Flickr along with the stats and all metadata. Once this action is taken, it cannot be undone.
To bulk download your media, useFlickr’s official iPhone and iPad appor theweb app.
In the mobile Flickr app, touch a photo you’d like to save in your iPhones’s Camera roll, tap theShareicon at the bottom and selectSave Imagein the menu.
Sadly, Flickr for iOS lack bulk downloading. Thankfully, this feature is supported in the web app. What’s more, you can use the mobile app to select multiple photos to download later with the web app.
Simply touch and hold an item in Flickr for iOS to enter the selection mode. Select items you wish to download and tap theShareicon to send yourself a share URL via Messages, Mail, AirDrop or other listed service.
I use AirDrop to send the URL to my Mac.
Now switch to your Mac or Windows PC, load a web browser and visit a link you just shared with yourself. A private webpage opens with all of the media you selected for sharing in the mobile app. Click theDownloadlink at the top to bulk download the items to your computer as a .ZIP file.
An even easier method allows you to directly download your Flickr media to a computer. Point your web browser at flickr.com and log in with your user name and password. Now click theYoumenu in the navigation bar at the top and selectAlbums.
Now hover over a thumbnail of an album you’d like to download and click theDownloadicon that appears at the bottom of the thumbnail.
Finally, clickDownload ZIPto have your Mac grab a ZIP archive: open it from your computer’s Downloads folder to confirm that the Flickr photos and videos you’d like to keep are safely stored on your computer.
To download an individual photo or video, click it first, then hit theDownloadicon in the top right corner and chooseOriginalfrom the popup menu to download the item in its original resolution to your Mac.
you may also cherry-pick the photos and videos to include in a ZIP file viaFlickr’s Camera Roll, then clickDownloadat the bottom of the interface.
Keep in mind that there may be limits in the web interface for how many individual items you can select at once for a single ZIP download.
How to delete your personal Yahoo account
1)Visitedit.yahoo.com/config/delete_userin your web browser and sign in with your Yahoo ID. If you use a phone number to sign in, visit thealternative account termination page instead.
2)A webpage titled “Terminating you Yahoo! Account” will load. Read the information under “Before continuing, please consider the following information.” To proceed with account deletion, confirm your identity with the password, solve a CAPTCHA, then click “Yes, terminate this account” at the bottom of the page.
3)A confirmation message pops up, informing you that the account’s been deactivated and scheduled for deletion. You will no longer be able to log in to this account and it will be permanently deleted in about three months.
How to delete kid/family Yahoo account
As mentioned, a linked child account must be deleted before you can request to terminate your family account. You may want to download any data you want to keep from your child’s account.
Information about downloading a child account’s emails, contacts, calendars and Flickr media is covered earlier in this tutorial so we’re not going to duplicate it here.Yahoo provides detailed instructionsfor downloading content posted to a child’s Yahoo Groups and conversation history on Yahoo Messenger.
You’ll need to sign in to your kid’s account to download any of the data.
The same steps for deleting your personal Yahoo account apply to deleting kid/family accounts:log in to the “Terminating your Yahoo account” pagewith your child’s account and follow the onscreen instructions to deactivate it.
Once closed, the account cannot be reactivated and all data and settings are lost. Only after removing each and every Yahoo child account linked to the family account can you request to close the family account itself.
Final steps
Terminating your Yahoo account does not alter or deleteyour People Search listing. This service lets you search publicly accessible information about other people from places like white pages, yellow pages, phone books and so forth.
To have Yahoo completely remove any listings about yourself from People Search,fill out this removal formorcontact Yahoo Supportabout removing your name from the People Search White Pages.
Last but not least, verify that you have no active premium services before deleting your account: visit Yahoo Billing Information for your account, choose theMy Servicestab, then click theCancellink for each subscription.
You may be unable to recover payments remitted for these services or the data associated with these accounts if your Yahoo account is terminated.
Wrapping up
Be sure tocheck out our archived tutorialsabout deleting other popular online accounts and keep those how-to ideas and suggestions coming viatips@iDownloadBlog.com.
