I was just setting up a Gmail account when I started thinking about all of the other e-mail accounts I’ve set up in the past and never used or completely forgotten about. I assume many other people do this as well; since many email services are free there’s no cost to just setting up a new account. Are there any statistics on this? For the sake of argument assume that an account that hasn’t been logged into for two years is abandoned.
It’s an interesting question, and it leads to another thought I’ve had for a long time - about the exhaustion of short usernames. Since most sites don’t seem to have a method for reusing usernames, all the short ones get exhausted, and are never available again, even if the user dies. At least domains expire and can be re-claimed.
If it gets really bad, don’t you think some genius (I kid, I kid) will write a simple script to prune the ones that are dormant?
I suspect AOL and yahoo already do that, at least for the free accounts. Why would they want to keep them around if no one is using them?
Add in never used. How many times have you had to sign up to download a file you need, to be assigned an email address on the site.? I had to sign up for two sites that assigned me emails while jumping me to the next stage for my product update. I was so confused at the end when I got the update, I have no idea who I signed up for.
Verizon drops any email address but the primary account, if not used in for a month. What’s anoying is when you pick one and find somebody had it previous and the spam shows up the second you access the email.
I just discovered last week that an account I had set up on Yahoo years ago to be given to spam-prone sites who insisted on an email address is no longer active. I was disappointed, but given that I hadn’t signed on to it in two or three years, I wasn’t surprised.
In another lifetime, I had a Hotmail account, but I wouldn’t remember the username or password now to know if it still exists or not.
Most free emails will deactivate the account if it has not been used in a certain ammount of time. I am not sure if they will ever delete it but i think they deactivate it. i beleive my hot mail was deactivated
Mine had been deactivated several times after months at a time without use, but this time, when I went to sign in, I was told that the account was nonexistant and was asked if I wanted to sign up using that name.
I abandoned a Hotmail account because I could never get into it.
But worse than that in terms of expired names, I’ll bet, are places like the NYTimes online where you have to sign up in order to read something…only it’s free…so you sign up, get your password & read your article. And then never remember the password. So three months later when the Times has another article you want to read, rather than figure out what your password is, or have them send you another one, you just create a new account. Much faster.
I’ll bet I have done that 10 times at the Times site alone.
Tons. TONS. I’m a public librarian and am always helping people with e-mail who aren’t very good with technology, and at least once a day I have one who can’t remember anything about their e-mail and they have to make a new one. There are people who I know have never used one e-mail address twice. Sometimes it makes me want to beat my head against a post until I can’t think about it anymore. “Okay, now, write down that ID and that password, because you’ll need them next time. All right?”
Also, they are extremely confused by the CAPTCHA. Not to mention their outright shock when their name is already taken by one of the bazillion e-mail addresses Yahoo already has.
Wonder what percentage of those are their own old email addresses that they’ve forgotten?
As for the user who talked about making accounts for things like the NY times to read an articale. There is a Firefox plug in called BugMeNot which has a huge list of free public logins that you could use for sites just like that. Alot of times you will notice the names it gives you have been removed by the provider for things agaisnt the TOS but many times it saves you time when all you want to do is read an articale
I set up a new email account last month, which was first name surname1@hotmail.co.uk.
I was VERY surprised it was available, it must of been dormant and not used by a name-sake for long enough until I got it.
There’s hundreds of me on Facebook, mainly in the US and Canada. We’ve actually got a site for My First Name, My Surname - Unite!
There’s also a few groups for SDMB lurkers too.
When firstnamelastnamebirthdate doesn’t work, I figure at least one.
I used to work with a guy who joked that he had been on the internet so long that his original e-mail address was john@hotmail.com.
Well, not to mention that I signed up for the Dope at least one other time. Sometime in 2001.
I made one post. That is, I attempted to make one post. I don’t think it went through, which is just as well because, upon reflection, I decided that particular post shouldn’t have been made, and then the board timed out, so it wasn’t. Then I got distracted with one thing and another and when I came back months later–maybe a year later–I couldn’t remember the username. I found the thread I’d tried to post in, and no username that sounded familiar to me was there.
In that case I’d written the password down, but I’d had to try several usernames before one was accepted, so what I had written down was the first username, my choice…and the password. Without a username the password was useless.
And yet that username, whatever it was, is still out there (or in here). They really ought to be purged, particularly if the account that goes with the username never made a single post and hasn’t been accessed in six years, which you’d think wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Yahoo deactivates accounts that haven’t been accessed in several months (don’t remember the exact number now), deleting any mail inside. The names become reusable.
I once had an ISP with whom I was happy; moved out of Spain; moved back in; wanted my “old” handle back. They said they couldn’t let me have it because of data protection laws 
OK… so you have my national ID number, an 8-word name, the same bank account I had one year ago… but you can’t let me have my old username?
What happens to all the emails sent to no longer in existence accounts?
Are they doomed to forever wander the innernet seeking for a place to rest their weary selves?