Flickr Account Login Failure? Yahoo Mail Questions and Account Recovery Solutions

Flickr is one of the world’s top online photo-sharing platforms. Since launching in 2004, it has been in the spotlight for 16 years. In between it changed hands and was acquired by Yahoo, until April 2018 when it was sold to SmugMug. But in recent years, as Facebook and Instagram grew stronger, many people have stayed away from Flickr for a while, even though it still seems to be an excellent image platform.

These past few days, because I became interested in Fujifilm’s X100 series cameras and wanted to first appreciate other photography works[2] as a reference for purchase, I discovered that both of my accounts could not log into the system normally. No matter how I rushed through verification, the official webpage would endlessly redirect me back to the registration page (see the image below).

Figure 1, Flickr registration page.

This level of abnormality made me momentarily suspect whether I had opened a phishing site copied by a scam group, or whether my DNS had been hijacked, so I spent some time doing a security check.

It was not until I opened Flickr’s official Facebook fan page and found people all over the world complaining in various languages that their accounts could not log in normally that I became certain this was Flickr’s own problem.

After checking Flickr’s official statement, in short it is related to Yahoo’s decision years ago to integrate Flickr into the Yahoo database. At the time, given the Yahoo engineering department’s superb technical integration, it succeeded, but now that it is being sold again, it has become less easy.

The funny thing is that even Flickr CEO Don MacAskill himself got his account locked (eye roll).

Ever since Yahoo officially transferred the system to SmugMug in April 2008, this problem has persisted. Perhaps it involves the original Yahoo internal confidential data, which is why it became so difficult. If the data were leaked by accident, that would truly be a big deal.

It was not until November of the same year that Flickr officially announced it was temporarily unable to solve the problem, and stated that in 2019 it would officially release seamless login, allowing everyone to restore normal account login.

But, and this is the But, Flickr waited a whole year until November 2019 before finally releasing some solutions. In the end it could only choose to cut off the old Yahoo confidential data part, but at least it could preserve the original account and treasured photo works, only requiring a password reset[3].

In simple terms, the method to recover a Flickr account is for the user to log in directly on the official website with the original account’s email, and the system will automatically start the process, after which a letter with a temporary password will be received, which can be used to recover login and create a new password.

Obstacles Encountered in Recovering the Flickr Account

The password-creation letter should have been smoothly sent to the email, but when I applied it got stuck at the “Profile Access Confirmation Screen” in Figure 2 below. Whether I agreed or chose “not now,” I was pushed back to the registration page in Figure 1 above.

Figure 2, Agree to let Flickr access the Yahoo profile.

After some attempts, I finally passed the system verification smoothly (as shown in Figure 3 below) and obtained the account confirmation letter with the new password.

Figure 3, System update confirmation.

Well, if everyone has sharp eyes, you should have already spotted where the problem is, right?

If you want to pass verification smoothly, just switch the webpage’s display language from “Traditional Chinese” to “English,” and the system upgrade function will work normally — it seems the team that bought Flickr from Yahoo is very short on Chinese talent (eye roll) (eye roll) (eye roll).

However, although I received the new temporary password, when I tried to log into Flickr with that password, I was told the password was wrong. At that moment I finally understood what the ancients meant by “speechless, questioning heaven.” Fortunately, by then we had already completed the account upgrade, so we could choose the “Forget password” function on the login screen, re-apply for a password, and afterward finally log into the Flickr platform smoothly!

Mysterious voice: It looks like another once-great business is about to disappear. It is already April 2020, and I still cannot log in easily, and even encountered a bug, which means Flickr has somewhat given up on old users (except for the paid Flickr Pro).

Note ⚠️, if you really need to recover your album account and cannot smoothly recover it, you can directly leave your information on the official “Help Contact” page for the Flickr support team, and communicate directly to solve it. They can help you reset the system, which is all Flickr can currently do (English only).

References

1. [Photography Gallery | What Are the Differences Between Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa When Displaying and Preserving Photos](/pho