Login once a year (at least)

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

How do you feel about email providers deleting email accounts that haven't been used in over a year?

Is it fair to give someone's registered email away to someone else?

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I ask because I randomly remembered an old @aol.com account I had a few years ago. I was able to login like normal, and that made me remember some other old forgotten email accounts on hotmail and gmail. The other ones were deleted completely.

 

[Evil Eye]

Reallocating email addresses is pretty bad... you could have sensitive stuff sent to the wrong people.

 

[+paradox]

Reallocating email addresses is pretty bad... you could have sensitive stuff sent to the wrong people.

exactly...

but that's how they get more revenue, to delete old emails for open use by a potential future user that might use it on a regular basis and have those ads going to make money for the email provider...

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I did some research and found out that hotmail, gmail and yahoo all have policies to delete accounts that have been inactive for 9 to 12 months. After they're inactive for that long, they're deleted and anyone can register that username. So the next person will be able to receive all your emails.

I was able to snag a good email (with no numbers or underscores) recently and I think it used to belong to someone else because I get newsletters and whatnot from things I didn't subscribe to.

Anyway, make sure you login to your emails every so often if you want to keep them!

 

[alakazam]

It doesn't seem right from an ethical point of view, but from a business point of view, I can understand that keeping inactive email addresses forever would lead to the email providers losing profit due to lack of traffic.

Also, I thought the deal with Yahoo! was 6 months, not a year...  

 

[duskpire]

I did some research and found out that hotmail, gmail and yahoo all have policies to delete accounts that have been inactive for 9 to 12 months.  After they're inactive for that long, they're deleted and anyone can register that username.  So the next person will be able to receive all your emails.  

I was able to snag a good email (with no numbers or underscores) recently and I think it used to belong to someone else because I get newsletters and whatnot from things I didn't subscribe to.  

Anyway, make sure you login to your emails every so often if you want to keep them!

That could probably explain all the random junk mail that I get some times.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

These weren't junk they were like actual newsletters that people subscribe to.

I got an email saying someone commented on an instagram photo. I don't have an instagram account and there's no reason for my email to be attached to anyone's instagram profile. Pretty sure I re-registered someone's expired email at this point.

 

[Icetex's iconIcetex]

Well i can tell you that hotmail and gmail accounts delete is BS
because i have my company email on hotmail and gmail haven't used them much recently since last year
although i had check this year both hotmail and gmail because see if can clear out spam and check see anyone contacted my company email
which is vexingames(at)hotmail(dot)com and realvexingames(at)gmail(dot)com
also i have AOL account for i had 10 years(still do) i left my aol account for 3 years because for a time that email was parental controlled(which was finally deactivated in 2013) although i did went back to it after 2011
also didn't discover other browsers until i was much older had my own computer(at the time i was still using terrible AOL browser)
currently i have 3 alt spam aol accounts xpracer500 and firecyber500 and rat700 most of them i haven't used in a year
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for years now i been trying get my mom use other browsers beside damn AOL broweser
but she still think she needs AOL browser to check emails but she doesn't