We’ve not been all that long in the Internet Age, but I have to wonder about all the long-defunct accounts lying around out there. The ones people created and never used, the ones owned by the now dead, the forgotten ones, the long closed, etc. Like on this board, other boards, I know, gmail addresses, etc.
Does anyone know of any sites that actually bother to clean up this crap AT ALL and free up those long-held but unused account names?
Personally, if I was running a site, I’d run a cleaning bot once or twice a year to look for accounts that have not been used in any form in at least two years, and completely obliterate them. Remove them from all databases and allow someone else to sign up with that name. After all and for example, there is absolutely NO reason that the user name on this board needs to sit unused for 10 years or so just because the person who used it is no more. Likewise BillyBob@gmail.com (as a throw-away example) is so innoculous that there is no reason that it needs to be locked away from all the other BillyBobs that might want to use it, just because Billy Bob Johnson forgot about it/stopped using it/died several years ago.
Although I said “two years”, I could see some circumstances or places where you might want this extended to say, five years*, but again, there is no reason for a permanent retirement of such things beyond the simple laziness in not wanting to clean up your database.
Because companies are stupid and will continue to send sensitive information to that email long after Billy Bob Johnson has died or instructed them to change it to Robert.Johnson@somewhereelse.com.
It’s way more trouble than it’s worth for them. First of all it would cost a non-trivial amount of money to hire someone to write and test the code to do this. Secondly, think about the liability. People would sue because their account was taken away and they had irreplaceable files on it and they wanted them kept even though they hadn’t accessed it. People would sue because they got the account that was previously used by a guy who posted racist shit all over the place and the lost a job opportunity because someone did a search on it and they should have never been issued that name. Who wants to deal with that shit. Just let them be BillyBob13244@whatever and be done with it.
There are usually intermediate steps between purging an account and doing it.
For example I’ve been on boards and they say “If you do not use your account we will deactivate it.” Then a year later it’ll say “If you don’t reactivate your account it will be deleted.”
So that no one loses anything without knowing about it for a long time
I think the biggest reason why sites don’t like to do it is you get duplicates. If SDMBxxx was a popular poster and got banned or just quit, then someone could take the name and if you weren’t looking too close people would think it was the orignal SDMBxxx not the new guy who got the name when the accounts were purged.
What liability? Whose terms of service agree to or promise to maintain files forever, even after “abandonment”? That would be an irrational and unreasonable expectation of service by a for-profit corporation. If nothing else, simply re-write your terms of service to say “Accounts not accessed for a period of two years will be suspended. After three years, they will be deleted. After five years, the account name will be available for use by others.”
As for “Oh shit, this account name used to be used by the Grand High Wizard of the KKK!”, well, what real liability does the site have for this kind of thing? What responsibility does the user have NOW for making sure that his BillyBob316 isn’t one character off that same racist asshole (BillyBob3I6), and thus, easily mistaken for it?
One of the suggestions I had for one of the spin-off boards that I no longer visit was to do an annual purge of (Posts = zero) + (last access > 1 year ago) = Delete Account.
I didn’t put that well. There would be frivolous law suits that they would have to deal with. Of course they wouldn’t really be liable. I don’t think that it would be worth the hassle for them.
I believe both Hotmail and Yahoo will empty your Inbox and other mail folders and purge your address book if your account remains inactive for too long. You can still reactivate it and keep the same address, but they don’t save your files forever.
If they can do this it probably wouldn’t be much more difficult from a technical standpoint to just delete the entire account, but it also probably doesn’t cost them much in terms of space to keep the account there in case the owner does want it to become active again.
It also will cut down (notice I didn’t say eliminate) the spam that new users get. If canadjun@hotmail.com used to be used by a careless luser and I blindly took it over I would get all their spam for V1aggra, ox1c0ntin, hot russian babes etc. I might not appreciate that.