Responding to "A 24-hour locksmith for your Yahoo! account"

I responded to this post on the 'Yodel' blog, but since I have little faith that it will get through their comment moderation, figured I would post it here where I'm pretty sure it's safe and might get some trackback ...

That’s great for all of the people who forget their credentials. What about those who have their accounts hacked and stolen from them. Does this prevent the hackers from changing that verification data, such that only the “real” owner knows the information? Seems like once someone has access to the account, they can view / change all of that information, which Yahoo then will no longer be able to verify against.

This situation happened to my wife several years ago, and after going several rounds with Yahoo! support we finally just gave up on Yahoo.

Hers was a rare but not isolated case - here is a (non exhaustive) list of people who have had their accounts hacked and apparently never re-acquired: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aprofiles.yahoo.com+%22Hack+AZ%22

So how would one of those people go about recovering their account, or can you paradoxically only get your account back if you already have access to your account? In my opinion Yahoo! has a very poor track record in this regard (Sarah Palin, etc) and I cannot see how these changes provide any improvement.

Maybe someone reading should send me an email to help get my wife’s account back.

Comments to this post would work as well, Yahoo!