Can this be a lesson to all to never keep an only copy of your photos on a photo site, even if you are paying for it.

Again, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Store them somewhere else - there is plenty of providers: Dropbox, Amazon, Microsoft, Backblaze, ect.

And make sure at least two of them have egress policies so you can get your data back. Regardless, keep you own backup somewhere unless you don't care about losing the data.

WD, seagate.

(I.e. your own hardware)

Well yeah, if your pictures are only worth "FREE", then that's the right call.

How does this relate to the fact that the photos are stored for free? You store them the same on apple drive and it's not free..

I read it as you only use one service because there is only one good free one (= not willing to pay for a second copy = can't be that valuable)

Do you guys remember when a few years ago Yahoo decided to make old, stale accounts up for grabs again? I lost my old Yahoo account which was forwarding mail to my main Google account. I haven't logged into it in ages. I could never re-register it or reset access to it after Yahoo killed it. And luckily i was able to move everything away from it, BUT it still forwards me mail. At some point I remember getting something that indicated that somebody's using it. I still can't believe this bonehead move on Yahoo's part.

I am from a place where information security awareness is in general very low. So while people fill bank forms and all they don't usually give much care and often fill wrong mobile numbers and many times fill wrong emails or just <their first name>@some-email.com just because there's a field called "email" on the form. The agents (who are almost never bank employees and usually third party hires) also add it to "sir, don't worry, you sign here and here and I will do the rest".

So yeah, my [email protected]/yahoo.com regularly gets: 3 bank statements, 2 credit card bills, 1 postpaid Internet and mobile connection bill, and password recovery mails from other Internet accounts, my mobile number gets OTPs for heaven's sake. I received a Facebook password reset mails.

Initially I would try to contact the bank/company and they couldn't care less. In fact people themselves didn't give two hoots - none of them (I was able to contact one guy on Facebook using the mobile number in mail). So I've created filters to delete them upon receipt.

What surprises me is even newsgroups verify email and some online services verify mobile too but banks never do. It's so crucial but banks never verify mobile numbers and emails, at least not here in India.

Hi Tony- My name is Darius, PM on the Flurry team. Spoke with the Flickr team and they will follow up.

The fact that people have to do this to get that team's attention is ridiculous.

Me too. For me it is because I moved country, and now my 2FA SMS won't work because my number changed. And there is no way around it, no 2FA no account.

I mean, yes, I understand security blah blah. But if I can send you a scan of my passport, which shows the same me as in most of the photos, surely that is an exception? And if I can reply to the same [email protected] too? But no, there is no way I can get to a human.

I am a bit torn on this one. On one hand it makes sense that you shouldn't lose the account, on the other it opens 2FA up to social engineering.

Recently I have been a lot more careful storing provided one time codes or the original QR code to prevent running into this.

Best practice is to never use 2FA SMS

Agreed, but it was the best option available at the time.

Try https://twitter.com/YahooCare, just maybe.

Email support is available from Yahoo, if you're locked out of your Flickr account:

http://bit.ly/2l14F4Q

I've just emailed you for details; I'll try to get the right person to help.

Thanks for posting, I thought I was the only one with this problem.

Yep, I have exactly the same problem.

same exact problem thought i was the only one

If you won't, then don't mention it. It comes across extremely rude and arrogant ("oh yeah I think I know a way to help you, but no I won't.")

He is signalling that he has connections. One day we could be as cool as this guy.

No, it's because I used them once for a former employer issue (after a Yahoo! employee referred me ~2 years ago for that specific thing).

Knowing that the program exists should be sufficient for anyone who needs this to find access, though. Hint: google the fucking string I quoted. But I'm not putting in any effort beyond communicating that fact for some random, hostile person on a website, no.

The information might be useful nevertheless.