How can I recover old emails Yahoo deleted due to account inactivity?

April 2021 8 2K Report

How can I recover old emails Yahoo deleted due to account inactivity?

I had emails sorted into folders that I've been saving for a very long time (some over 15 years old), including correspondence between friends, family, teachers, and actors from my favorite childhood movies... very important emails that I've cherished over the years. Today I logged in to find out that Yahoo wiped all of my emails due to my account being inactive for 12 months. I typically login pretty regularly to make sure I don't get flagged as inactive, and have always found my emails safe. I don't recall when the last time was I logged in, but can't imagine it's been over a year (perhaps I made an error and simply forgot?) I understand that Yahoo must need to clear accounts that truly aren't active anymore and free up space for those that are indeed active, but surely I can't be the only one who has experienced this problem, and it seems pretty unfair to me that Yahoo would wipe people's accounts without some sort of prior notice or option to recover/save emails that have been saved for many years. I've tried looking for a customer support option, but have had no luck. Any help right now would be really greatly appreciated.

Yahoo Products / Yahoo Mail / Other - Yahoo Mail

Chuck

I too was missing many years of emails. I HAVE FOUND some emails from people I knew I had by searching their specific names or subjects. I wish they would all show up/or will show up, as with other people many are very important to me.

Jeannie H

I have the EXACT same situation as Nadia and adysonca. Are there any updates? How can I retrieve those lost emails that are so important to me?

adysonca

Have you received any updates or help?? I hope they got back to you and that there's some way to recover your important messages... :-(

I just logged into my Yahoo Mail and saw that my inbox, trash, archives, and EVERYTHING is totally gone. I have logged in within the last 6 months for sure. I thought their rule was that you have to log in every 12 months??? I am devastated, as there were emails from 20-24 years ago in there. And of course because of the COVID-19 virus, they're conveniently not available to answer any questions. I put in a request for help, but it didn't allow me to be specific, and had no options for recovering a fully deleted email account.

I think that they should send a clear message to your backup email account with warnings that your emails will be deleted within 30 days or whatever the time frame. Seems only fair. I'm just a sentimental person who wanted to go back and reference a few old emails today during this lockdown crap in CA, and now everything seems to be deleted without warning. It's really infuriating. All I can do is wait to see if there's anything that can be done. I doubt they will help, and if that's the case, I invite you to join me in never using Yahoo products, services, or sites again. That's absolutely what I'm planning to do if they deleted all of my messages from all of those years.

Sharon

It depends on how old it is and when it was last used. It no longer exists if it has not been used in over a year. Yahoo deletes old and inactive accounts after 12 months of non-use.

You can only retrieve mail from no longer than 7 days ago. Restore lost or deleted mail: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/sln2552.html