Ask HN: Yahoo deleted all my emails. Now what?

Logged into my old email after a year - it has everything setup with recent details, so I know for a fact it isn't more than a year. To my shock, all my data is now gone. Just a simple `fuck you` email at the top of my inbox. Is there any way to recover my old emails? Unfortunately I used to use this as my main account since the early 2000s. No shady stuff, just your average joe with an average email. Here's the only email now in my account:

Dear Yahoo Mail Member,

We’re so glad to see you’re back! Due to inactivity, your mailbox entered an inactive state. This means we stopped accepting your incoming emails. If your period of inactivity was long enough, we also deleted all of your emails. Now that you’ve signed back in, your mailbox has been reactivated and you will start receiving new emails again shortly. For more information, please visit the Yahoo Mail policy page at: https://en-global.help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/SLN2018.html

We’ve made some upgrades to your email experience since the last time you signed in. Now Yahoo Mail has a cleaner design and upgraded features to help you keep your inbox in order. Find whatever you need quickly without the clutter. Search by keyword, contact, date or any combination of these. With themes, you can pick your favourite colour and the level of intensity. The choice is yours. Stay on top of everything on the go. The top-rated Yahoo Mail app makes life easy to manage with features such as Subscriptions View. See all the mailing lists you’re subscribed to and easily unsubscribe with a single tap. You can download it here: https://mail.onelink.me

We hope that you enjoy your new Yahoo Mail experience.

Thank you,

The Yahoo Mail team

13 points | by neya 15 hours ago

7 comments

  • cableshaft 6 hours ago
    My Yahoo Mail had all my emails from when I was in college on it (back when people used to chat with each other via email, also AIM). I still used it sometimes for collecting junk mail and as a backup address for my gmail, or to reread a few of old college emails once in a blue moon, but otherwise rarely logged in. Apparently it had been a year because I got that same message as you did. What a shock.

    Never been an issue until then (I must have gone over a year without logging in at some point before then and still was able to log in), and then suddenly 'screw you, a chunk of your past is gone with no way to recover it'.

    I was so upset when I realized what happened. I'm still annoyed by it. I know I should have exported it all away a long time ago so it's on me, but I didn't think to do so, I had gotten so used to it always being there.

    A year of inactivity before total deletion is way too short for email, imo.

    [-]
    • neya 3 hours ago
      I totally agree with you. I wish they had tried to send me reminders to download my emails atleast. Sad.
  • gdulli 6 hours ago
    Dropbox did this to me with my actual data. I misunderstood it as a service where I could upload some data, uninstall the client, and expect the data to be there as long as the company still exists.
    [-]
    • neya 3 hours ago
      I hate how normalized this has become. Apparently Google has also taken the same route with Gmail.
  • KomoD 12 hours ago
    > Is there any way to recover my old emails?

    Ask Yahoo. I'm guessing no, since it says "we also deleted all of your emails".

  • orionblastar 15 hours ago
    I read my Yahoo account with Thunderbird, which stores messages on my hard drive.
    [-]
    • neya 14 hours ago
      I wish I did this. Too late..
  • carlosjobim 9 hours ago
    You don't have any old machine laying around or any old hard drive from when you might have read your Yahoo emails with a mail client?
    [-]
    • neya 3 hours ago
      Unfortunately not.
  • dotcoma 14 hours ago
    Now what?

    Now it’s time to pay for a good email service, like Tuta, Proton or Fastmail.

    [-]
    • neya 14 hours ago
      Thanks, I'm already on Proton, just wanted to know if there is a way to recover the lost emails...
      [-]
      • al_borland 7 hours ago
        Only Yahoo support can say for sure. Likely not, unless they were to compress and archive them for some period of time before actually deleting them.
  • marton-laszlo-a 15 hours ago
    [flagged]