back to article Yahoo! hack! payout! nearly! approved! and! the! question! is! how! to! spend! 60! cents!?

Long-suffering Yahoo! customers may finally get some compensation for having their personal details exposed to hackers not once, not twice, not three times, nor four times, but five times between 2012 and 2016. The proposed $117.5m settlement from the US class-action lawsuit brought back when Yahoo! actually existed is headed …

  1. NetBlackOps

    Fortuanately ?

    I have my password files going back to March 7th, 2013, so I have access and logins to both my accounts. Does this mean I get $1.20?

    1. jgarbo
      Facepalm

      Re: Fortuanately ?

      You mean people keep sensitive, important information of a web-based email account? And leave their house key under the mat, and pray for rain in a drought? Oh well, idiocy is more common than thought.

  2. chivo243 Silver badge
    Coat

    I monitor my credit

    Does that count? What about the missus? She watches it go down the toilet?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I monitor my credit

      It does raise the obvious point though. WHY does it matter whether you have credit monitoring? How and why does that affect the level of (in)competence shown by Yahoo and therefore your eligibility for compo?

  3. Alan J. Wylie

    BT used to use Yahoo e-mail. The crooks downloaded entire address books. I run a mailing list for a mountaineering club, and all these years later I'm still getting spam, both to myself and to the mailing list address, purportedly from members, including one who died years ago.

    1. Timmy B

      "BT used to use Yahoo e-mail"

      They still do. Sadly. Regardless of how much you ask to be swapped over some are stuck on it. It seems that there is some rule in place that governs switching that makes not a bit of sense. SWMBO has 2 BT email addresses - one has been switched and the other not. Both are tied to the same BT account.... Go figure!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Amazingly...

        I appeared to have lost an Email to this hack... twice. Somehow I managed to get access back to it years after, then it went again a few months later. Though other password breaches may have meant shared passes got crossed pollinated.

    2. Andy Non Silver badge
      Devil

      "including one who died years ago"

      I still get the occasional email from my accountant who died several years ago, asking me to click on various links. They must have rigged up email in heaven - or hell, not sure which direction my accountant went.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Also, the options screen in the BT version of Yahoo Mail has stuff like 2FA missing. Nice work there BT and Yahoo.

  4. Roger Greenwood

    In order to qualify

    Don't you have to be a resident of the US as well? I thought I read that somewhere else.

    1. W.S.Gosset

      Re: In order to qualify

      Yes, that was my understanding too

      1. AndyMulhearn

        Re: In order to qualify

        The Emil I got says "... if you are a citizen of the United States or Israel..."

        Lets me out then

  5. BitCoward

    US! or Israel! Only!

    Nuff! Said!

  6. W.S.Gosset
    Thumb Up

    "Yeah, we're using vague as a verb."

    Groovague!

    1. MiguelC Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: "Yeah, we're using vague as a verb."

      Verbing weirds language.

      1. Charlie van Becelaere
        Happy

        Re: "Yeah, we're using vague as a verb."

        "Verbing weirds language."

        And languaging weirds verbs and gerunds.

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    I've just spent 3 days trying to get back to my Yahoo mail account

    Three days ago I actually got a mail from info@service.comms.yahoo.net that explained, in verbose legalese and in detail, that I was eligible for reimbursement under the Yahoo Data Breach Settlement. At first, I just filed it in Spam, but then I started wondering about the status of that old account. I dug out my password for it, logged into Yahoo.com and clicked on the mail icon. I was asked for my email and password, only to get an Error 0 - Web Site Not Responding or something along that line.

    Three days later and I just, finally, got access to a completely empty Inbox. I think there is nothing at all because it states at the bottom that I am using 0.01% of 1TB. The thing is, I can't even access the Advanced Settings panel because Yahoo! starts churning and the cursor goes to Occupied and never comes back.

    I'll check again in ten year's time, see if they've managed to improve anything.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: I've just spent 3 days trying to get back to my Yahoo mail account

      They reserve the right to delete the mail in your mailbox if you don't log in regularly.

  8. 's water music

    compo face

    Not being strictly licensed for legal practice myself, I am instead running a claims management service for yahoo! customers who can't be bothered with all that form filling nonsense but still fancy some free money (less my percentage natch)

    Obviously some marks commentards are not stupid enough too sophisticated to need this service. To them, I can offer a MLM affiliate programme franchise of my service to enable them to be burned of some help to further yahoo! customers.

    You're welcome

  9. Andy Non Silver badge

    Ditched all my Yahoo email addresses

    twenty years ago, back in the days of slow dial-up. They changed the online user interface to "improve" it by adding a zillion more features; but instead made it incredibly slow to load and use, so I gave up on Yahoo. Seems like a very wise decision in retrospect.

  10. Joe Drunk
    Pint

    My Yahoo account still works although seldom used. Too bad I don't have credit monitoring, I really could have used that 60 cents to buy a packet of crisps to go with my pint.

  11. Halfmad

    The irony..

    of having to pony up more personal information to get compensation for a loss of it.

  12. phuzz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I still have RocketMail address, because when they were bought by Yahoo* they promised to honour all of their existing accounts for life.

    So, Yahoo can never delete my @rocketmail.com address, and I still occasionally log into it just to annoy them :)

    **** edit, I just tried to login, and it's not accepting the 5 digit code that they texted to my phone. Thanks Yahoo!

    * (to form the basis of Yahoo Mail, in the same way that Hotmail was bought by Microsoft a month or so before that)

    1. Just Enough

      "they promised to honour all of their existing accounts for life."

      If if there's one thing you can depend on... it's a "for life" promise from a company!

    2. katrinab Silver badge
      Flame

      "for life", means for the life of the company, which is likely to be very much shorter than your life. The Yahoo! company founded by Jrerry Yang and David Filo is very much dead, and in its place we now have a company called Oath Holdings Inc t/a Yahoo!

    3. NightFox

      You should consider a class action against them for that, maybe double your money!!

    4. phuzz Silver badge

      Just tried to login today, and it whisked me straight to my inbox, with no password or verification code requests, which is weird.

      The only emails in there were from Yahoo, telling me about things like Yahoo groups that they've switched off.

  13. Avatar of They
    Happy

    Yahoo

    I use it everyday as my email address, have done for a lot of years. Lots of reasons, it works, people know it, old contacts can get hold of me because it is constant, it is memorable.

    Why change it for something like a Gmail account so my data is given, taken, hacked, monetised and lost. Why change it to anything M$ where it is given, taken, hacked, monetised, lost and denied access because M$ suck.

    1. Franco

      Re: Yahoo

      I'm willing to accept your criticism of Microsoft and Google as valid, but defending Yahoo over them in the comments of an article stating that they have been proven to have exposed users personal details to hackers 5 times does rather undermine your argument.

    2. 1752

      Re: Yahoo

      Had a Yahoo email since 98 and still my main account. So that makes two..

  14. Cardinal

    Anyone know why Israelis, and only Israelis, are included in American class action suits?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Because not including them would be anti-Semitic.

  15. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Credit monitoring, Yipee!

    In another couple of years, I'm going to have massive redundancy in the credit monitoring department. Equifax, Yahoo, etc etc. I have filed with all of the credit info merchants to lock inquiries into my credit anyway. None of this does me a blind bit of good. If another judge allows a company to offer credit monitoring instead of monetary compensation, I'm going to visit their courtroom and be sick at the entrance. Opps, sorry. I haven't been feeling well since getting back from China (or whatever country is hosting the latest plague).

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