sooo … my yahoo account got hacked a few months ago. to stem the tide of obnoxious sales messages being sent to my address book, i shut the account down. of course, now that sign-in doesn’t work for flickr.

i wrote to yahoo account services and explained the situation. they had me jumping through all kinds of hoops to verify the account belonged to me: name, email address, copy of government issued ID, birthdate, zip code, etc.. i faxed them the stupid questionnaire which was no help AT ALL since i apparently got one question wrong. i opened the account more than 10 years ago and i have no memory of the security settings required back then. yahoo doesn’t care.

after several emails back and forth with them i get:

The account in question has a credit card stored in the Yahoo! Wallet. In order to provide further login support we must be able to verify the last 8 digits of this card.

WTF?! to my knowledge, i have never used yahoo wallet. if i did, it was probably to PAY for my goddamn flickr pro account (yes, these idiots get money from me and still won’t help). but, of course, they won’t tell me if that’s the case. i’m sure i don’t have that card anymore since my bank was bought by chase this year and we were issued new cards so … fantastic, right?

let me be clear, i have no interest in using my yahoo account for anything other than signing into flickr. if there is a way to move my photos from one flickr account to a newly created one, i would do that and the FAQ suggests that there is a transfer option.

HELP PLEASE: is there a way to switch my old flickr account to a new yahoo ID? can i transfer the images to that new ID? this seems to be the only viable solution now since i got this email fuck-off from yahoo today:

We apologize for any inconvenience this situation has caused. However, it appears that we will be unable to provide login assistance for the Yahoo! ID in question. By accepting our Terms of Service, you agreed to provide true and valid registration information, and to keep that information current and updated should it change.

You are welcome to establish a new Yahoo! ID at any time. In accordance with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, we are unable to correspond further regarding this account.

i have hundreds and hundreds of photos here. if i can’t figure out how to transfer them to a new flickr ID, it’s buh-bye flickr and i’ll post a link here to a new photo site. i’m open to any suggestions.