How Do I Find My Yahoo! Account?
With the recent Yahoo! data breach, it’s important to understand the next steps to take to fully protect your private information. But what if you’ve forgotten if you even have a Yahoo! account? Well, finding out if one still exists under your name would be the place to start.
Yahoo! is one of the largest search engines / email providers in the world, so chances are, you’ve created a Yahoo! account at one point or another. It could be one of those throwaway email accounts that you distribute to random websites to receive their “limited time only” 10% off discount code or it could be the safe haven for your most private email messages, either way your personal information still exists on the account.
Here are some steps you can take to find out if a Yahoo! account exists under your name:
1. First and foremost, you’ll want to navigate to the Yahoo! log-in page and follow the “Trouble Signing In?” hyperlink. From here, you have the option of entering your current Yahoo! email address (which we don’t know), a recovery email address, or a recovery phone number. You’ll want to try all of your known email addresses to see if they match as potential recovery addresses for any accounts, and then subsequently with any phone numbers that you may have and/or had.
Remember, Yahoo! began in 1994, so your unknown account could be much older than you anticipated, meaning that the recovery information would associated with the account would be attached to older phone numbers/email addresses.
2. Check all of your social media accounts to see if there is an associated Yahoo! account with any of them. Most social media platforms require a secondary/backup email account for privacy and recovery purposes, so you’ll have to dig into your account settings to see if one’s attached.
3. Follow the same process as Step 1 for all of your known email accounts to see if there is an attached secondary Yahoo! account as a backup plan. This may seem like a tedious process, but without knowing the email address, it will be tough to locate if one exists.
4. Whether you’ve located your account or not, you can check out haveibeenpwned to find out if you’ve been hacked. This website is dedicated to finding out if any associated email addresses have been breached.
Submit all usernames that you’ve created at one point or another to see if any associated accounts have been breached. You can also do this with any known email addresses that you have.
I’ve Found My Yahoo! Account, Now What?
Congrats! You’ve somehow located your long-lost Yahoo! email account. But, after checking haveibeenpwned in Step 4, you’ve come to realize that the information has been breached. This is when you can do either of the following:
a.) Choose to change your password & any privacy settings / personal information to limit what’s visible
OR
b.) Cut your losses and abandon ship. Translation: delete your account immediately!
Make sure all of your email and social media accounts are protected with complex passwords — meaning at least one special character, number, and at least six letters — and use two-step verification processes if they’re offered. Better protecting your private information is one of many steps you can take to ensure that your personal information isn’t leaked or hacked.
If you’re one of the many people that use a throwaway email address to receive special offers, signups, newsletters, etc., remove all of your personal information from the account and use a unique password so that the login information can’t be used to access any of your other accounts.
Written by Peter J. Schaub
President & CEO, NeoCertified
@Peter_J_Schaub
