Your Yahoo! email account may have been hacked. If you have changed your Yahoo! password - or any other data - on Yahoo! in the last three (3) years, there is a 99.9% chance that your email account has been hacked.
You Cannot Fix This On Your Own!
If you try to change your password by going to Yahoo!s password reset page, that page is not a Yahoo! page. It is actually the page of some company in Turkey, (or Russia.) If you change your password here, they will have access to your password and begin spamming from your account and/or change your password shutting you out completely.
If you do a search for Yahoo! or Yahoo! customer service on any major search engine, (minor ones too, maybe), including Yahoo! search, the results you see are not Yahoo! - they all belong to that same company in Turkey. By calling the number shown or clicking on the link, you will be directed to the company in Turkey. The phone calls are forwarded, the click is redirected. Yahoo! does not have a call center in Turkey!
If you contact these people, they may ask you to give them your password - don't do it! They might ask for your address - don't do it! They might ask for your credit card number - don't do it! They might ask you to allow them access to your computer - Don't do it and hang up or close your browser immediately. If you have been online, shut your computer down for at least 30 seconds. Make sure it is completely off and not running in "sleep" mode.
You must contact Yahoo! customer service in Sunnyvale, California directly - not by the internet, not by email - you must call Yahoo! customer service at 1-866-562-7219. You will hear "Yahoo!" when the call is answered, this assures you that you are really speaking to Yahoo (until this too gets hacked). When the customer service agent comes in, explain this notice to them and also explain that Jason Adams - a consumer advocate - called in a couple of days ago and confirmed this information. Now the Yahoo! customer service agent must change your password because you can't do it - the hackers will know if you do it and then gain access to your account.
Yahoo! will not ask for your password or billing information, if they do - it's not Yahoo! and hang up immediately. The real Yahoo! already has all this information. They will ask you to answer the security questions you established when you set up your account to verify your identity - if you created security questions. They might ask you for your address. If they do, only provide part but not the street name and confirm with the agent that they have the same information. Next, ask the agent to tell you the second or third letter of your street name. If it is correct, you may give the remainder of your address. The real Yahoo! agent will have these answers on their computer along with your other information, if they ask you for the questions and the answers or just the questions, it is not Yahoo! you are speaking with.
Request the Yahoo! customer service agent to change your password. They will do so and send you an email to your alternate email address or any other you specify. Keep the Yahoo! customer service agent on the line until you complete this process. The password Yahoo! sends you is a temporary password good for one use only. You must type it in manually and not copy and paste. With the Yahoo! customer service agent walking you through the process, change your password to something that is difficult to figure out or remember - write it down so you don't forget. With this done, you now have control of your account again.
If your Google or Bing accounts or searches have not been hacked yet, it is probably only a matter of time before they are. If they have been, please post to this blog with your comments below. We will help you to figure out what to do and how to fix it. (If we can - no guarantees!)
Yahoo! is a great service and I like it better than Google or Bing. I will continue to use them in the future. I hope you do too.
