The Computer Tutor

There are lots of things you can do to stay safe while using your computer. Probably hundreds. But a few things I keep seeing come up over and over. I really believe that if everyone at least kept these three rules while using their computers, a lot of problems would be avoided and everyone would be a happier computer user.

Tip 1: If you know a website’s address, don’t type it in the search bar

A lot of people have their home page on their web browser set to be a Google search page. Nothing wrong with that. So whenever they open Chrome or Firefox, the first thing they see is the opportunity to do a Google search.

The problem comes up when they are trying to access a specific website. For example, they might need to go to my own website, ComputerTutorFlorida.com. If I’m on the phone with them, I’ll give them that address so they can open their web browser of choice and go to my website.

I wait a little bit on the phone, and in many cases the next thing I hear is, “Hmm, well I see “computer instruction”, “computer tutor jobs”… which one is your website?” That’s when I know they didn’t actually type the website address in the address bar; instead, they did a search on Google.

There’s a big difference in going straight to a website, and just doing a Google search. If you wanted to get to my website and you didn’t know the address, you might search Google for computer repair Safety Harbor and hopefully you would find me at or near the top of the results.

But if you know the actual website address for the site you want to visit, like ComputerTutorFlorida.com, you can just type it in the address bar (at the top of the screen) and hit Enter, and you’ll be taken directly to that website. That way is much more reliable, because if you do a search, you’ll come up with a list of Google search results – and in many cases, most of those options are websites designed to infect your computer or scam you out of some of your money. The scammers are very excited for people to do a search – don’t let them catch you there!

Tip 2: Don’t search Google for anything free

This is kind of related to the first one, because it’s a good example of the actual dangers awaiting you in the Google search results.

These are some of the really common Google searches that people around the world do every day:

See any connection among those search phrases? You got it – everyone wants to get something for free. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with free things, but in this case it can really get you in trouble.

You see, the scammers know that people search Google with these phrases many thousands of times each day. So they make websites that match those search, in order to come up at the top of the search results. The average person usually doesn’t know the difference between a legitimate website and a malicious one (since the scammers work very hard to make their sites look completely innocent).

As an example, I did a Google search on the phrase “free screensavers” and checked all ten of the websites that came up on page 1 of the search results. SEVEN out of those ten were malicious and tried to get me to download junk software to my computer. So unless you are good at identifying those malicious sites, I would recommend you not do any Google searches that include the word “free”.

Tip 3: When an error comes up, don’t wait to tell your tech about it

This one is unrelated to the first two, but still pretty important.

Sometimes a client will come to me with a computer problem, maybe some oddball thing that their computer is doing that just doesn’t make any sense. Like it might restart at random times. Or a certain program won’t open (or won’t close). In some cases, the most practical way to fix this is through a Windows process called System Restore. As you use your computer, Windows can create “restore points” that allows you, if needed, to take the computer back to the state it was in on the date of that restore point. Usually there will be restore points available for the previous few days or a week or two (this can vary widely though).

So, in looking at the problem, I might think it could be a nice quick fix if we just took the computer back a few days – before the problem started happening – and that might just resolve it. I ask the client, “Do you remember when this started happening?” (it really helps if they know the actual date and even the time they first noticed the strange behavior).

But then, the response I often get is, “Well, I guess it was maybe 4 or 5 months ago. Could have been longer than that though, I don’t really recall.” So that kills the idea of using System Restore as the easy fix, since there are no restore points that go back that far. And, too many other things have happened in the last 5 months to be able to use System Restore to fix this one specific problem.

That means when something weird starts happening on your computer, don’t wait and just hope it will go away (these things very rarely fix themselves). The sooner your tech can check it out, the less time it usually takes to get it fixed (and that normally means the repair cost is lower as well).

One of the annoyances about chatting with someone in Facebook Messenger on your computer is the fact that they other person knows when you’ve seen their most recent message. So you kind of feel obligated to go ahead and reply sooner, since you know the other person knows you’ve read that last message. Too much pressure to keep the conversation going! Here’s how you stop that.

Since I’m at my computer much of the time, this happens to me fairly regularly.

If a friend or a client sends me a message on Facebook, it’s often about a computer repair or to inquire about buying one of my refurbished laptops. I’ll see the message show up, and I know that if I don’t answer it then, I’ll probably forget about it until I happen to notice it a few days later and that’s not good. So I respond. Then the person sends a follow-up message or question. And now I’m in an ongoing chat, even though I might have lots of work to do and really don’t have the time available to chat.

But when the other person sends a message and it shows up on my screen, that person gets the immediate notification that the message has been seen by me. Since he knows I’ve read the message, it looks rude if I don’t reply.

But now there’s a way around that social awkwardness!

It’s an extension for Google Chrome called Unseen. And what it does is pretty much exactly what you would expect it to do. It removes the “Message Seen” notification from the Facebook chat. And it does a few other things too.

Here’s how you get it:

Open Chrome, and go here. Click to install the extension in Chrome. It will tell you when it’s been installed, and you’ll also see a little blue and white icon, like this:

When you do one left click on that little icon, you’ll see what options are available to you in the menu:

You can play around with those various functions to see what they do, but really the first one is the one we’re talking about – you can read the most recent message, and the sender won’t get any notification that you’ve read it.

I also like the “block the typing indicator” option too. My chat buddies don’t need to know when I’m in the process of typing a message! Let them wonder!

I think there’s an extension like this for Firefox also, but I haven’t investigated that since I use Chrome almost all the time. BUT – since most people now use Facebook Messenger on their phone – you might be excited to know that there’s also an Android app that does the same thing this Chrome extension does. Just go to the Google Play Store and search for Unseen – No Last Seen. It’s free but of course there will be ads. I assume there’s also an app for iOS but I don’t use an iPhone so can’t really tell you about that.

For a while, Adobe has proven that they are a software company not worthy of our trust or respect. And recently they provided us with another reason to question their integrity. This applies mainly to people using the Chrome web browser.

For quite some time, Adobe has been trying to sneak unwanted software on to all of our computers. If you go to their website and install Adobe Flash, or Adobe Reader, partway through the installation process you have to be careful to UNcheck a couple of boxes that they have “conveniently” pre-checked for you. If you don’t notice that (as they are hoping you won’t) you’ll end up with extra junk software on your computer. Of course, they make money from that so it doesn’t really matter to them that you didn’t want those programs installed.

In addition to this, one of the ways you can keep your computer running fast is to make sure no programs are running in the background other than the ones that NEED to be running all the time (such as your antivirus, your online backup, etc.). When you check that list of auto-startup programs, you’ll see Adobe Reader in the list. No problem, just uncheck it so it doesn’t run all the time, right? That’s fine, until the next time it updates – then it goes right back on the list so it’s running in the background and slowing down your computer. Adobe doesn’t really care what you want.

And now their newest scheme…Adobe adds their own browser extension to your Chrome web browser.

You read that correctly.

When you go to Adobe.com, and choose to install the latest version of Adobe Reader, we already know you have to be very careful to UNcheck those checkboxes. Otherwise you’ll end up with stuff from McAfee and other companies installed on your computer. So you go through the whole process, and not a word is said about putting other things on your computer.

Of course, Adobe puts the useless “Adobe Reader” icon on the desktop, but that’s easily deleted right after the installation is done.

But watch what happens next time you open Chrome. Up in the top right corner of the Chrome web browser, you’ll see Chrome’s security pop up and alert you that a new browser extension has been added:

Remember, this is not Adobe telling you about the sneaky installation – it’s Chrome telling you. And they’re warning you that the extension is not only already added, but what the Adobe extension is able to do. This is unbelievable. For 99% of the population, the only reason we want Adobe Reader on our computer at all is to be able to open PDF files. Do you really want this program to be able to “Read and change all your data on the websites you visit”? Not a chance.

When you see this alert come up, all you have to do is click on “Remove from Chrome”. Just speaking for myself here, but I personally don’t need or want this extension. When you remove the extension from Chrome, Adobe Reader will still be on your computer, and you’ll still be able to click on PDF files and open and read them. We don’t need Adobe infiltrating Chrome to do those things.

And what if you already saw that warning come up, but you clicked “Enable extension”? No problem, you can still get rid of it. Open Chrome, and click the 3 little dots up in the top right corner. In that drop down menu, click on Settings, and in the new window click on Extensions (over on the left). Find the Adobe Reader extension in the list and trash it.

Always gotta stay one step ahead of these guys!

If you need computer repair in Safety Harbor, Florida or Palm Harbor (or any nearby location) just give me a call. I also do Remote Support repairs for clients all over the U.S. Happy to help if you need me.

Recently I had a client with a Windows 10 computer that would power on, but it wouldn’t boot all the way into the Windows operating system. Sometimes Windows will run self-diagnosis and repair the problem and reboot. But what if you reboot, and it just keeps coming up to the same error screen? That’s when you need a Windows 10 recovery drive.

If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about with that bootup error screen, here’s what it might look like:

Of course, the one you might see may not look exactly like that. Especially the error code, since there are lots of different ones. But what this type of error message means is that without some type of repair, the computer won’t be able to boot into the Windows 10 operating system.

Unless… unless you have a Windows 10 recovery drive.

Here’s the catch – if you see that error screen and you haven’t created your recovery drive, it’s too late to create one using this computer (though you could go to a different Windows 10 computer and create one). So the best time to create one of these is right now, while your Windows 10 computer is booting up and working properly.

You only need two things to create this recovery drive – your working Windows 10 computer, and a flash drive. One of these:

A 16 gb flash drive should be plenty big enough (here’s a 16gb flash drive on Amazon). Even 8 gb would probably be okay. That is, unless you’re going to back up the system files from your computer to the flash drive (that might sound complicated but it’s just a matter of checking a box – you’ll see in the process below). If you want to do that, you should probably get a 32 gb flash drive (here’s a 32gb flash drive on Amazon).

Keep in mind, you may not be creating this recovery drive with plans to use it yourself. You might not know how to get your computer to boot up to a flash drive, and you might not know how to use it once it is booted up. That doesn’t matter – even if you see that error code and have your computer tech come over to fix it, it will be a help to him if you have this recovery drive already created. Or if you have everyone over to your house for Thanksgiving dinner and your computer gives this error message, there’s a chance that one of your family members might know enough about computers to use this recovery drive and solve the problem.

Here’s how to create the Windows 10 Recovery Drive

1. Insert your flash drive into a USB port, and once it is recognized, note what drive letter gets assigned to it (such as drive E, drive F, etc.).

2. In the search field (lower left area of the screen), type: recovery drive. It will come up in the search results:

3. Now you’ll see the window where you’ll actually start the process to create the recovery drive. Either check the box or don’t check it, and click Next.

(If you don’t choose to back up the system files to the recovery drive, that’s fine. Without the system files, you can still repair Windows with this recovery drive. The advantage of having the system files copied to the recovery drive is that you can then actually reinstall Windows from that flash drive if you ever needed to. As I mentioned earlier, if you opt for that, it will take more space on the flash drive so you’ll need a bigger one. If the one you have isn’t big enough, you’ll get an alert about that.)

4. Now you wait for a few seconds while your computer looks for your flash drive

5. Now it finds the flash drive (and maybe some other drives you might have connected). Choose the flash drive and make sure there’s nothing important on there, because whatever is on there will be wiped out when the recovery drive creation process kicks in. Then click Next.

6. You’ll get another warning about all of the files on the flash drive being deleted, then click Create:

7. You’ll see the progress bar as the Recovery Drive is created on your flash drive:

This will take several minutes. Go walk your dog, or just walk yourself to take a break from the computer for a bit. Might take maybe 15 minutes (just a rough guess). When you come back, you’ll see that it’s all done:

Now just label that drive as “Windows 10 recovery drive” and keep it in a safe place, where you can access it easily. But hopefully you’ll never need it!

I use my Google calendar for just about everything that goes on in my life. This includes all of my onsite computer repair appointments here in Safety Harbor of course, but also birthday and anniversary reminders, dentist appointments, online webinars, etc. So I don’t like it when I get an email to remind me of an appointment, and it automatically ADDS that appointment to my Google calendar. Here’s how to disable that from happening.

Here’s what usually happens.

I’ll go to the dentist for the 6-month checkup, and before I leave, we set an appointment for the next visit. So I enter that in my Google calendar on that date 6 months into the future. That way I won’t accidentally book anything else into that time.

Then, 5 months and 3 weeks later, my dentist office sends me an email to remind me of that appointment. And just to double check, I go to my Google calendar and look, and in that time slot I now have TWO appointments booked for the dentist at that date and time. One is the appointment I entered 6 months previously, and the other one was just put there by that email that came in. So I have to delete one of them.

The same thing happens when I sign up to attend an online webinar. I’ll put it on my calendar so I don’t forget, but inevitably the webinar system automatically sends out a reminder to everyone that registered. So I end up with two entries for that one event again.

I just want these “convenient” reminder emails to leave my calendar alone! Fortunately there’s an easy solution.

You can just disable Gmail from being able to add those events to your calendar automatically. Here’s how:

1. In your Google Calendar, click on the Settings gear icon in the top right corner, and click on “Settings” in the drop down menu:

2. Scroll down until you see “Events from Gmail”, and UNcheck the box next to “Add automatically”:

3. You’ll get this little warning pop-up, so you should obviously click on “Continue”:

4. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click Save.

All done! Now the only entries you’ll find in your Google Calendar are ones that you deliberately created yourself.

Did you know there’s a free program you can run, and it will check your computer’s hard drive to see if it’s showing any signs of failure?

Disclaimer: This software is not foolproof, it’s just one of the best at detecting signs of hard drive failure.

The program I’m referring to is called Crystal Disk Info. It’s actually the hard disk checking program that many computer techs use, especially when the test is being done remotely. You can check the website here. The download you want is the Standard Edition (3.8 MB).

It’s super simple to run this software and do this test. In fact, when you run the software, you are actually doing the test so the first thing you’ll see is the test result, telling you if your hard drive has any issues. It looks like this:

The “health status” indicator is the primary thing you want to look at. There are 3 main possible statuses:

You can probably guess that the one you really want to see is “Good”. If that’s the case, you’re all set and you can just close the program. If you don’t have a backup, get one. Your hard drive can go from good to bad very quickly.

If you see “Caution”, this means that your hard drive is showing early signs of failure. I always see this as a friendly warning or alert. If you have important files or folders on this computer, you should make sure they are backed up. Then you should plan on at least replacing the hard drive. Depending on the age and condition of the rest of the computer, it might make sense to just replace the whole computer. There are several factors to consider in this decision (I can help with that).

If you see “Bad” that means that the hard drive is on its last legs and could finally crash at any time. If you are able to get a backup from a drive such as this, consider yourself lucky and go ahead and save whatever files you can. Then, make the decision to replace the drive.

When you install Crystal Disk Info, at the end it gives you the option to create a desktop icon. I recommend doing that so that you notice it sometimes. When you think of it, just click to run the program and do a quick check on the hard drive. Can’t hurt to do it once a week, but you could even do it every day if you wanted to. Just don’t assume that you’ll have time to do a backup AFTER you find out the drive is failing – because sometimes there is no warning.

Sometimes there are things that on the surface seem to be true, but when you dig a little deeper you find out they aren’t true at all. Or, there might be something that you know in your head is false, but your mind still thinks about a different way. For example – what’s the moon made of? Obviously you know it’s not made of green cheese, but for most people that’s the first answer that pops in your head.

In the world of computers, there are things like that as well. Here are a few.

Myth: “I can’t have a virus. I have an antivirus program!”

First, there are new viruses every single day. The best antiviruses do update their list of known viruses (also called “definitions”) multiple times each day, but there is always that chance that a brand new one will slip through.

The other big reason is that even the best antivirus can’t completely protect against bad behavior by the computer user. If you deliberately open every email attachment, search Google for “free games” and click on every link, and allow strangers (scammers) to access your computer remotely, you’re very likely to have virus or malware problems. It’s kind of like if you bought the best, most expensive tires for your car – if you drive through a pile of nails, you’ll still get a flat tire.

Myth: It’s good to move files from the computer to an external drive to save space

First, if you’re trying to save space, my first response would be, “Why move those files somewhere else? Why not just delete them?” If you delete them, you are definitely achieving the goal of saving space. But your response might be “But they are things I want to keep.” If that’s the case, then they should be backed up. And if you simply move them from your computer to an external hard drive, they’re still only going to exist in one place – which means you don’t have a backup. If you don’t want to lose them, you have to back them up. This means your important stuff is on your computer AND stored somewhere else as well.

Second, for most people, deleting the whole Documents folder contents on the computer wouldn’t really free up much space. Word documents, text documents, PDF files – they just aren’t that big (usually). Even pictures, unless you have thousands of high-resolution images, won’t free up enough space on your hard drive to make a difference. If you’re running out of space, you need a bigger hard drive or a new computer.

Myth: No one would ever guess my password

Sometimes people will tell me that their password includes random things such as a city they lived in as a child combined with the name of their cousin’s cat. From a simple human perspective this seems like it would be foolproof, because another person would never guess the combination of those two words. But a guy that’s trying to get your password isn’t just sitting at a desk somewhere trying to come up with these things. They do it with very powerful software.

A computer can try hundreds or thousands of combinations of words and numbers every minute, around the clock, without ever needing to take a break or sleep or eat. This strategy is called a “dictionary attack” because it can try every word in the dictionary in a very short amount of time. In most cases, the hacker’s work is easy since so many people use very simple passwords (like “password” or “123456” or “monkey”). And they use the same 1 or 2 passwords for all of their accounts.

You need to be smarter than that. If your password is easy to remember, it’s easy for a computer to figure it out.

Myth: I plug in my portable drive, so I must have a backup.

When you buy a portable drive, most likely it will already have some software on it that’s ready to be installed on your computer when you plug it in. This software is supposed to automatically run and back up your data every time you connect the drive to your computer. I recommend that you DON’T use that software as your backup program.

When I talk to someone who is using that drive manufacturer’s backup software, I ask them:

Every time I ask those questions, the answer is either “I don’t know” or “I hope it’s working…”. Not good! A backup is supposed to give you peace of mind, but how is that possible when you don’t know what it’s doing or if it’s even working?

So when I set up a backup to a new portable drive, the first thing I do is get rid of everything on that drive. Start fresh, clean slate. Then I install the Macrium Reflect program because I use it every single day and I know what it does and how reliable it is. It’s the software I recommend for regular system image backups.

I recently did a data recovery for a client here in Safety Harbor, because she THOUGHT she had a backup when she really didn’t. Fortunately I was able to recover all of the files for her, but it doesn’t turn out that way every time. Don’t take a chance with your important stuff!

If you’re still using Windows Live Mail as your email program, you need to be aware that Microsoft support for this program ends on January 10, 2017. This means that there will be no more security updates – so when security problems are discovered, they won’t be patched. Translation: it’s time to go to an alternative.

You know the email program that lots of people really loved? Outlook Express. It was easy to use, didn’t have a lot of confusing bells and whistles, and millions of people used it. Unfortunately, it ended with Windows XP. But Microsoft offered a replacement, which was Windows Live Mail. It worked pretty similarly to Outlook Express so a lot of people made that switch.

Windows Live Mail is actually just one component of a group of programs that Microsoft called Windows Essentials. Those programs are:

So after January 10, 2017 you won’t be able to download those from Microsoft and install them on your computer (though there are other ways to get them if you really need one or more of them).

That may not be important to you, if you already have Windows Live Mail installed (so you don’t need to download it again anyway). But what IS important is the fact that Microsoft will no longer be supporting it from a security standpoint. New security holes are discovered pretty regularly in all software, particularly programs that are in such wide use around the world as Windows Live Mail. But now, instead of patching those security problems, they will just be left unfixed – and ripe picking for hackers to exploit. That’s not good in any software, but it’s especially dangerous in an email program.

So if you have to stop using Windows Live Mail, what are your options? Well, there are a few.

First, you could switch to a web-based email such as Gmail. Or even Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail/MSN/Live). On any web-based email service, you can log in to your account from any computer in the world and get your emails, see your contacts list, and of course send and receive messages. Web-based email has become extremely common since people see how easy it is, and the fact that it doesn’t require a special “email program” (such as Live Mail) to be installed.

Second, If you’re using Windows 8 or 10, both of those come with a “Mail” application that’s built in to the operating system. Frankly, I have not used that Mail app for either Windows 8 or 10, so I really can’t say anything good or bad from personal experience. I’ve heard from some reliable sources that both are pretty good, and other people have told me they’re awful. But at least it’s an option, if you really need an email program.

Third, if you have Office 365 (or an earlier “Business” version of Office), you might consider using Microsoft Outlook. I’ve been using Outlook for years and I like it. You should keep in mind that Outlook has LOTS of features that you will probably never use. It’s designed so that the busiest professional person can use it for a thorough contact list, email communication, and a full-featured calendar system. But you don’t have to use all that it offers if you don’t want to. Just set up your folders, keep your address book, and send and receive emails. In that way, it works fairly similarly to Windows Live Mail, so the learning curve isn’t too steep.

And finally, you could just go out and get one of the third-party email programs that are free to download and use. Probably the most popular one in this group is Thunderbird (created by Mozilla, the same people that give us Firefox). I have a few clients that use Thunderbird, but personally I’ve never really been a big fan of it. Can’t really say anything specific against it, just that I didn’t find it to be very intuitive when setting up an email account. But you might like it, who knows.

So those are your options. One thing to note – Windows Live Mail isn’t just going to stop working on January 10. You will still be able to send and receive emails just like you already do. But as more time goes by, it will become less and less safe to use. So don’t procrastinate in finding another solution.

I do computer repair here in Safety Harbor, Florida and I’ve been in the computer repair business since 1999. I also work with clients all over the country (through remote access) so wherever you are, I can probably help!

I use the Copy – Paste process every day, and you probably do as well. For the most part, it’s pretty straightforward – you choose a word or section of text and copy it from one location, then you go to another location and paste it. But when you’re pasting into a Word document, there’s another thing that comes up – the “Paste Options” box. What is that thing?

You’ve probably seen this thing, even if you don’t know it by that specific name.

Let’s say you get something in an email, like an address of a person, and you want to copy it from the email and paste it into a Word document. When you right-click in Word to paste it, you get something like this:

How do you know which one you want?

The first step is to just move your mouse over each of the little clipboards. When you do that, you’ll see the name of each of those options:

So now you know what your 4 options are – but what do those titles mean?

The best way to really see how this works and what those options mean in practical, daily use is to practice. Copy and paste and try out every one of those.

Also, keep in mind that those four options that I listed are not the only four options you’ll ever get when you do a Copy – Paste into a Word document. Microsoft goes into more detail on all of the options you might see, here.

But what if you just don’t want to see the Paste Options box at all?

It’s easy to get rid of the Paste Options box. In Word, click File – Options – Advanced and go to the “Cut, copy and paste” section. Find the box next to “Show Paste Options” and just uncheck it.

If you need help with your computer on this subject or anything related, I do computer repair here in Safety Harbor, Florida and all around the country via Remote Support. Just give me a call.

I created my first Yahoo email account back in the late 1990s, but I stopped actively using it when Gmail introduced their email service and I made that switch. So that Yahoo account is still there, just not being used.

I recently got an email from Yahoo that was pretty outrageous in light of recent events. That email started like this: “Dear Scott, We’re committed to your account security…“. If there’s any company that is unable to keep my account secure, it’s Yahoo.

A few months ago, I wrote about Yahoo’s revealing that they had been hacked by some other country’s government back in 2014. Over 500 million Yahoo users had their data potentially stolen. This included email addresses, passwords, and security questions. This was not revealed to their user base until 2016.

It has also been revealed that Yahoo built a software tool that allowed them to search through their users’ private email messages, at the request of some of our own US government agencies.

And now, most recently, Yahoo has admitted ANOTHER attack on their servers that resulted in the private information of more than ONE BILLION of their users being compromised.

So, dear Yahoo, I hope you’ll forgive me if I question how committed you really are to keeping my account secure.

In fact, at this point, I’ll be actually deleting my Yahoo account and all of the data contained in it – and I recommend you do the same. In the past, I’ve told my clients that if you want to switch email addresses you don’t really need to do anything with the old email account other than just don’t use it any more. But with Yahoo demonstrating time after time that they are incapable of keeping anything secure, we need to take it one step farther and just get rid of those accounts completely.

Important note: before you delete your Yahoo account, it’s a good idea to check and make sure you don’t need it any more. For example, on my Gmail account, I still had the Yahoo email as the alternative email address to use for account recovery (in case I forgot my password, for example). You need to check this and make sure you definitely don’t need to use this Yahoo account for anything whatsoever.

Another important note: when you abandon your Yahoo account, there is the possibility that someone else could come along and create their own account with that email address. Just something to be aware of.

And – when you delete your Yahoo account, you are also deleting your Flickr account.

With all that being said, here’s how to delete your Yahoo account:

1. Go to their termination page – https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user (you’ll have to sign in to your account)

2. Then you’ll see all of the warnings and disclaimers, so read that and then they’ll ask for your password once again:

3. And finally, you’ll need to enter the “prove you’re human” letters and click the “Terminate this account” button:

If the termination was successful, you’ll be taken to a confirmation screen that tells you the account is scheduled for deletion and you no longer have access to it. It actually doesn’t get deleted from Yahoo’s servers for about 90 days.

What if you want your data removed from Yahoo sooner than 90 days? In that case, go through your emails and folders and whatever information you want gone and delete it manually before you actually delete the account itself.