Two massive security scandals have hit Yahoo in a matter of days. First, the company acknowledged that hackers stole usernames and passwords for at least 500 million users, and the hack happened all the way back in 2014.
Then, a report from Reuters revealed that Yahoo built a software tool that could comb all the emails sent through its system and extract data for unnamed intelligence agencies. These are two good reasons to ditch your Yahoo account, which will only take you a couple of clicks.
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You can change your password to secure your account from hackers, but that doesn’t mean Yahoo’s software tool won’t still spy on you. That’s why for some people, deleting their accounts might be the better option.
Before you do anything, you should make sure that you export all your data. Your Yahoo account doesn’t only hold your email conversations. It also contains contacts, calendar, and Flickr photos. To back up that data, you should follow the instructions posted on Yahoo’s help pages.
Once that’s done, head over to this Yahoo page where you can initiate the process of deleting your account. Log in, do a Captcha to prove you’re the holder of the account, and then press that delete button.
The trick is that you’ll have to wait some 90 days before your data is actually removed from Yahoo’s servers. This is a safety mechanism that ensures that malicious individuals can’t delete a Yahoo account after getting access to it.
If you’re wondering, other tech companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter have not implemented similar spying tools into their software.
