I had totally forgotten that I still have a Yahoo account. I haven’t used it for years. How can I delete my account, including my Yahoo Mail account?
Turns out that there are still quite a few people using Yahoo and particularly its Yahoo Mail service, though not a fraction of the billion active users on the Google Gmail platform. Still, Yahoo’s had tough times in the last few years and was recently purchased by Oath, a division of Verizon. As part of that, Yahoo privacy has eroded somewhat, so there are definitely some attentive users who have jumped ship. Not a bad idea, really.
The problem is, like most services, Yahoo makes it pretty tricky to figure out how to actually delete your account. Sure, you can change the password and then let it sit, dormant, but if you really want to walk away from the Yahoo empire, there’s a very specific path you have to take.
Perhaps surprising – but then again, perhaps not – it’s not something you can just stumble across, even if the Account Info link from Yahoo Mail seems like a highly logical place to find a “delete my account” link:
You can sign out, but you can’t quit. Kinda like Hotel California, right? 🙂
Instead, you need to go to the URL https://yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com/delete-my-account
I’m not going to make that a simple click, though, because you need to be 100% sure that it’s legit and for that I highly encourage you to either copy and paste from the above or type it in yourself. You don’t want to think you’ve axed your account when you actually just gave it to spammers.
Once you go to that link, there’s a long explanation of what’s going on:
Lots of info to pay attention to, not the least of which is that you can’t undelete your account: Once you commit, then all of your email, archives, data, photos, etc, all just vanish *poof* in a puff of digital smoke.
If you’re sure you want to proceed, click “Continue” at the bottom of the legalese page and you’ll get here:
As confirmation, Oath asks that you re-type your email address (well, it’s possible that they don’t have access to your logged-in Yahoo account, but somehow I suspect they do otherwise they’d ask for a password too). Type that in, take a deep breath and ensure this is really, really what you want to do. Yes? Click on “Yes, terminate this account“.
That’s it. You’re done. No more Yahoo email address, no more account, no more nuthin’…
It’ll be a few days, I’m guessing, before all traces vanish, but you’ve done what you set out to do, delete your Yahoo account. Mission accomplished.
Pro Tip: We have lots of Yahoo help here in our General Computing Help area. Please check it out!