Aeons ago, when I created a Yahoo account, I was privacy mad, and I deliberately set a birthday of Jan 1st 1900.

It's caused me no end of problems since - luckily I never use my Yahoo account for anything anymore, and nor should you.

The sooner we purge Yahoo from the nets the better, imho.

I created my yahoo account many years ago, using my real first name and lastname, and using my real birthday.

Now I know better, and never use any of my real information in my online accounts. Meaning not just birthday, but also a fake name for my first pet, for my first teacher, for my favorite food, and other challenge questions. Just in case.

The only problem is that some online services send me a Happy Birthday message on my fake birthday, which can be a surprise in my inbox.

What sort of problems does it cause? I throw around Jan 1st 1900 pretty freely for entities that have no real business knowing my birthday but want it anyway, and never had any problems with it

I spent about 3 years locked out of my Yahoo account, because I'd forgotten I'd set my DoB to 01/01/1900, and one of the unlock questions was what's your DoB. :)

Once i got back in (after suddenly recalling the password!) i tried to change my DoB so it wouldn't happen again, and found I couldn't.

I only discovered this as I'm archiving my old emails and Flickr before putting down this ancient account.

I hate what happened to this company.

Why does it matter if you're leaving them anyway? Why not just archive your emails then remove the account?

Well, I think it matters. I've never experienced such a policy in 25 years online. To be fair I could have spent a long long time detailing the problems and inconsistencies with the site but this was the most baffling.

It's a bit sad (I'm slightly nostalgic) to delete an account I've had for decades!

But every dog has its day.

How about leaving my favorite company alone? I'm tired of people only wanting something new, just because is new.

only service i use from Yahoo is Flickr for backup of my private photos (i also do backup to Google photos), any reason to stop doing it? isn't diversification always better?

If you are using their "private sharing feature" you need to aware that it isn't private by any means.

i am not using any sharing feature, just upload them through Flickr app where they are set as Private by default, not putting them into any album either