Can a free e-mail address be legally sold? Say I had john@hotmail.com as an e-mail address. There’d be some people out there who’d be willing to pay to have this e-mail address. Could auction it off? Has this ever happened?
Have you bothered to read the Terms of Service for the account. You may, or may not find the answer there.
Since you don’t own that address, you can’t sell it. You are using Hotmail under their Hotmail’s terms. THEY can revoke your email address under certain conditions, so how can you sell something which might disappear tomorrow?
I meant in general. I know that it’s against the terms for Hotmail. If not specifically stated in the terms of service, could you sell something that’s free?
I think the legality is of not much importance. The thing is I doubt anyone would pay to get a specific email address but suppose someone offers me $5 to give him my account and password and I accept, what’s anyone going to do about it? How are they going to find out?
I suppose if you reserved hotmail accounts by the hundreds so you could sell them you might get into trouble but a one time thing would go unnoticed.