How to delete your Yahoo account in 2024.

Yahoo has been around for decades, but over the years it hasn’t managed to keep up with user needs. Many have experienced sign-in issues or blocked accounts; Yahoo has been included in data breaches and Yahoo was even part of one of the worst surveillance scandals in recent history. These are just a few reasons you might want to say "I want to delete my Yahoo account". Today, there are many email providers that protect your data, run smoothly and offer up to date services. Keep reading for the steps needed to delete your Yahoo account permanently, from start to finish.

Why delete your Yahoo account?

The reason people want to terminate their Yahoo account are manifold and we go into more details on this later. The mostly mentioned issues people have with Yahoo are:

1. My old Yahoo inbox is flooded with spam and ads
2. I am shocked by Yahoo's data breaches
3. I want to reduce the number of mailboxes you own
4. I know Big Tech has bad privacy policies
5. I want to make a fresh start with a clean inbox

Whatever the reason, you've come to the right place for help to delete your old Yahoo account and make a fresh start! In this post, you'll get a full step-by-step guide to ger rid of your Yahoo account - without losing any data - and learn how easily you can create a free Tuta Mail account. This will give you a new email address that you can feel safe about as Tuta focuses on security and user privacy.

Table of Contents:

• First steps for closing your Yahoo account
• How to delete your Yahoo Mail account
• Why people quit Yahoo?
• Why Tuta Mail?
• What people say about us
• Looking for a new email provider?

How to terminate your free Yahoo account permanently (quick steps)

1. Go to Yahoo's account termination page in a browser.
2. In case you are not signed in, log in to your free Yahoo account now.
3. Confirm your identity by entering your Yahoo email address.
4. Click Continue delete my account.
5. Another page opens, enter your Yahoo email address and click Yes, terminate this account.

By following these quick steps, you can delete a Yahoo email address in a matter of minutes. However, if you've used your Yahoo email address to sign up for other services like your Amazon or your Facebook account or if you've stored important data in Yahoo, you should invest a bit more time before closing your Yahoo account permanently. So let's explain in details what to look out for before deleting your account and what steps to take to make sure closing your account runs smoothly and does not create any headaches afterwards!

First steps for closing your Yahoo account

Before clicking Close Account on Yahoo Mail there are a few steps you need to take to ensure your Yahoo account is securely deleted and all your data has been removed. A few more steps than explained in the quick overview above to delete a Yahoo account are necessary if

• You have a paid subscription in Yahoo Mail.
• You want to download your data from Yahoo before deleting the account.
• You used your Yahoo email address to sign up for other services.

Step 1. Cancel paid subscriptions

Firstly, you will need to cancel any active Yahoo subscriptions of your old Yahoo account. Note that it takes about 90 days before all your data is permanently deleted after canceling your subscription. During this 90-day period you can still retrieve your Yahoo account and data. Unfortunately, there’s no way to completely delete your account immediately.

How to delete your Yahoo subscriptions:

1. Go to My Subscriptions page
2. Pick the subscription you want to cancel and click Manage
3. Select reasons for the cancellation
4. Lastly, click Cancel My Subscription

To make sure all your subscriptions have been successfully removed in Yahoo, click the View Canceled Subscriptions button and ensure they are all there.

Step 2. Export all data and contacts

Yahoo Mail allows you to export all your information and store it locally. This should be done to ensure you don’t loose any important data like email addresses, calendar events, telephone numbers or previously received emails that you’d like to keep on file even when you are done deleting your Yahoo account.

Exporting data on Yahoo is easy and takes only a few minutes. Check the step-by-step guide below!

Yahoo will allow you to download all your data, including:

• Billing information
• Data used for personalized ads
• Account activity
• Data collected by Yahoo’s partners

Follow these steps to easily download your data from Yahoo Mail:

1. Go to the Privacy Dashboard
2. Click on the Manage Your Information button, scroll down to Download and View your Yahoo data.
3. Click Download My Data.
4. Choose which data you want to download. Select all to download everything.
5. Click Next.
6. Type in the email address that you want to receive a notification to when your data is ready for download. This mustn’t be the same Yahoo email address you’re about to delete.
7. Click Request Download.
8. You will then receive an email to your Yahoo Mail confirming your download request.

Note: You need to export your contacts separately. Do this from your inbox with these steps:

1. Click the contacts icon found at the top of the right-hand menu
2. Click the icon with the three dots on the right
3. Choose Export to CSV File
4. Change all email addresses associated with this account

Unlink other accounts from your Yahoo email address

Before deleting an old Yahoo account, it is crucial that you’ll change your email address to any linked accounts or social media profiles. Just imagine you lose your password to Twitter, PayPal, or Amazon and you are no longer able to reset the password because the account is still linked to your old Yahoo account that you have deleted ages ago! Make sure that this does not happen right from the start by updating all accounts with a new email address.

Review all your subscriptions and accounts, such as Netflix, Facebook, Amazon and make sure you have your new email address linked to them. If your Yahoo email address is being used for parental control over any other email account or service, make sure to unlink it so that access isn’t lost.

Note: To delete a linked Yahoo account follow the same steps as with the primary account. In the section below, we walk you through deleting your primary Yahoo account.

How to delete your Yahoo Mail account

Open your Yahoo Privacy Dashboard again and follow these steps:

1. Click on Manage Your Information tab
2. Scroll to Delete your Yahoo Account
3. Click Delete My Account
4. Read through the notice and click Continue Delete My Account
5. Confirm your login credentials
6. Lastly, click Yes, I want to close this account

Remember: your account isn’t deleted immediately. It takes a minimum of 30 days before everything is completely deleted. This waiting period is also dependent on the country you registered from.

In some regions like Brazil, Hong Kong and Taiwan it takes up to 180 days until your Yahoo account is closed completely.

If you log into your account before this 30 / 180 day period is over, your Yahoo account is reactivated and all your data restored. This is useful information if a few days after the deletion, you want to restore your Yahoo account. This will also recover deleted emails in Yahoo. However, if you log in only once to your Yahoo account, you will have to repeat the deletion process.

Why people quit Yahoo

Although popular, Yahoo is an unsafe provider and better alternatives exist, most notably when it comes to security and privacy. In the last decade Yahoo has fallen victim to a number of data breaches, some exposing users’ private information such as passwords, phone numbers and other personal identifiable information.

In 2013, all three billion Yahoo user accounts were affected by a data breach when digital thieves gained access to names, birth dates, phone numbers and even passwords that were encrypted with weak security systems that were easy to crack.

The malicious attackers were also able to get the security questions and backup email addresses that were used to reset lost passwords on Yahoo. This was very sensitive and valuable information for someone wanting to hack Yahoo users’ other accounts.

To make things worse, this breach was followed by another data breach in 2014 where at least 500 million user accounts were hacked and account information stolen. The information later appeared for sale on the dark web. In the 2014 breach, the stolen data may have included sensitive user information, like names, email addresses, telephone numbers, even hashed passwords, and, in some cases, encrypted or not-encrypted security questions and answers. The reason for this? Yahoo's weak security.

You can check whether your email address has been in a data breach on Have I Been Pwned. Does your Yahoo email address appear here? Then better delete it!

You may be left wondering which email provider is best to create an email address with. Big Tech providers are the most popular, but popular doesn’t mean private or secure. While they may be convenient and easy to use, they come with hidden costs: a loss of privacy. For optimal privacy and security of your data we recommended opening a Tuta Mail account.

Why Tuta Mail?

Tuta is renowned for being a secure email service, that focuses 100% on privacy. With Tuta Mail all your emails are end-to-end encrypted and secure. There’s no tracking, data collection, or ad-targeting. Tuta offers an easy to use email and calendar app available for businesses and personal use.

Our goal at Tuta is to make security and privacy easily accessible to everyone. That’s why signing up for a free personal account is easy! And the best part? You get peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and secure.

What people say about us:

Looking for a new email provider? Try Tuta Mail!

**Pick an email provider that’s secure, free, and comes with zero ads: Click here to sign up for a free email account with Tuta Mail!