Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Jan 02 2005

"Hello, Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Account…

“Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Account Services.

We apologize for any inconvenience this situation has caused. However,

it appears that we will be unable to provide login assistance for the

Yahoo! ID in question. By accepting our Terms of Service, you agreed to

provide true and valid registration information, and to keep that

information current and updated should it change.

The zip code that you have provided in your previous requests does not

match the information that was entered when this account was

established.

You are welcome to establish a new Yahoo! ID at any time.

In accordance with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, we are

unable to correspond further regarding this account.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Ruby

Yahoo! Customer Care – Account Security

http://security.yahoo.com

I swear, the concept that American standards (such as zip codes) might not exist in every other country in the world must have never even occurred to the idiots at Yahoo. If they’re talking about area codes, which Taiwan has, though nobody uses them, then I tried every single possible area code in my request form (including those from Taipei and Hsinchu); none of them work. Obviously it’s been changed to something I wouldn’t know, as has my password.

It’s becoming plainer and plainer that someone, likely within Yahoo! itself, has purposely gone in and changed my password and user information. I kind of wish they’d raise a legal ruckus about me making such claims, so I could have a shot at getting a Fark.com thread named “Yahoo! changes guy’s password and then sues him for complaining about it.”

What’s especially disappointing is that I allowed myself to become so reliant on a service of such questionable quality. Everything in my briefcase, all my email contacts, my website account information, update and domain renewal notification, as well as other services I actually paid for, have been stolen from me.

Yahoo Help should be officially classified as an oxymoron. They didn’t make even the slightest attempt to register the fact that I had all the information except for the “zip code”*, including the “secret question/answer” nobody else is supposed to know. Did they check to see if anyone else has logged in since my password was mysteriously changed? Did they do anything at all? No, I didn’t have a US-style zip code, so I’m obviously a fraud.

This kind of thing also happened recently to my friend Harry. His password just stopped working. I suspect Yahoo switched some settings, and in their strict adherence to their policy of “The customer is always wrong”, they are just ignoring the consequences of their actions.

*Advice to non-US applicants: if you think Yahoo’s being serious when they say you don’t have to enter one if you’re not in the US, think again; they’ll just add something when they feel like it and then disable your account.

posted by Poagao at 5:18 am  

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