Hacking into senior citizens yahoo account

I have an elderly friend who can't remember his Yahoo mail account password. When his account was set up the telephone number associated with it was a phone that could not receive texts, which means that the Yahoo procedure for getting a temporary entry key into the account doesn't work, since they can't send a text with the key.

Something which might help is that the person's former IT helper wrote a script of some kind that allowed the senior to go directly to his email account by clicking on an icon on the desktop as soon as the computer booted up, without even having to open his browser first.

Any suggestions on how to get into this account would be appreciated.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Check for saved passwords in the browser. Process is different for each browser.

Tip for dealing with old people- check all browsers. They have no idea which one they've been using, and if they installed a new one they wont notice.

a reply to: lordcomac

He is using Internet Explorer. I think it is IE 11. I'll have to find out how to get save passwords from it. Thanks.

a reply to: ipsedixit As much as I would love to help I will not. There are steps you can take to fix this problem with Yahoo. What you are asking may be legit but for any one of us to help you could be used for the wrong reasons. Contact Yahoo is my suggestion

This might help.

The program will see your stored passwords.

www.nirsoft.net...

a reply to: Allaroundyou

I understand. I don't want to look for hacker websites that might have the info, so I know where you are coming from and respect your decision. Unfortunately, I still have the problem to solve. I might try to reach a human being at Yahoo, as unlikely as that prospect sounds.

a reply to: grey580

I've seen reference to this program before. There is also a gambit with the autocomplete feature in IE that I want to try, but for now I don't have access to the computer in question. Later in the day I will try again.

One problem with this person's computer is that the former IT has it locked up tight so that the hard drive can't be written to, hence no program can be installed to it. Thanks for the response though.

I seem to recall some sites, very recently, offering a call option as opposed to texting for password recovery. I'd go to yahoo, and see if they have a chat feature and ask a CSR if they can do a voice call to the number with the security code.

It's going to be the easiest thing in the end.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Ok. Then you want to use the Credential Manager in windows. And look in his Web Credentials.

He will need to know his windows login password.

This link goes into some details about the Credential Manager.

www.digitalcitizen.life...

originally posted by: ipsedixit...a script of some kind that allowed the senior to go directly to his email account by clicking on an icon on the desktop as soon as the computer booted up, without even having to open his browser first.....

cant you just edit the script to see if the password is in it? try opening it with notepad.

a reply to: ipsedixit That would be my suggestion. If you have trouble getting a person to talk to email multiple departments at Yahoo. I am sure someone will help you.

a reply to: NobodiesNormal

Thanks to all for the responses. At the moment I am still waiting for access to the computer.

As far as the script goes, I think it very well might contain the old password, but I don't know the first thing about scripts and the like, how to access them, or where on the computer they might be found. The script is triggered from a desktop logo. It opens the browser and logs in to the Yahoo mail account automatically with one click.

a reply to: grey580

I've tried to get into the credentials manager, the "vault" of saved passwords, but the old IT guy has blocked access to it or disabled it. No joy in Mudville.

I might try attaching the drive to my laptop by USB and see what I can find looking around on it. He has "write protected" the drive and undoing that in Win10 is a very laborious process, which I'm not sure I'm up to.

I'm at the point of wanting to get all the files off the drive and doing a "nuke and pave" and starting over with a new clean install of Win7. I'm reluctant to do that, though, since getting access to his old email account (password on the system somewhere) and its archive of emails is of some (not paramount) importance.

One other item of interest is the presence of an "Avnisoft" rescue disk on the hard drive. I found it accidentally by trying to boot the system from a bootable USB drive, which didn't boot, defaulting instead to the Avnisoft disk. I know nothing about Avnisoft rescue disks or what one should do to "rescue" the system. If it could produce a system reset style recovery, it might be the way out of the woods. I'll have to look into it.

a reply to: ipsedixit

you just right click that desktop logo and hit Edit, if you dont see an edit option go to open with and select the program notepad. if this isnt doable perhaps check the properties of the 'logo'/icon to see the directory it points to then try the same thing on the files in there.