> but freeing up usernames.

WHAT?! They do that? That's SO dangerous, and perhaps what made me lose a domain name three years ago! I registered a domain in 2001 with my hotmail account, and noticed in 2006 that the registration had changed to another person in Ontaio, Canada. My only guess as to how they did that (after much investigation) was that they must have accessed my hotmail account, which was dormant for probably three years (but was the account I used with my registrar). I couldn't figure out how they got into my email, and I eventually gave up the fight and got a new domain name. Now I'm waiting out the expiration on the first one, hoping I can get it back.

Do they ACTUALLY recycle usernames? Is THAT how I lost my domain name?! Someone just registered my old hotmail account back, and then probably "lost password" to the account? Fuck that makes me so mad. There's no way MS does this...does anyone know?

Pretty sure they do. I seem to remember an hacking incident from the last 2 years where access to a Gmail account was gained by requesting a password reset to the defunct Hotmail account. Gmail was so nice as to tell you which account they emailed. Not sure if this is still the case.

Yup, I think user accounts are recycled. It's got its benefits and its downsides. I think it will be interesting to see 80 years from now. I guess non-recycled usernames will just get more esoteric?

Yeah, there are a lot of characters in the full unicode set.

There are far fewer human-readable combinations. There are even fewer with fewer than 10 characters.

If you register a domain (or anything else) with [email protected] and stop renewing yourdomain.com you're opening yourself right up for problems too.

100%. I had a friend in High School who liked to play Neopets (www.neopets.com). He would try out tons of old accounts with valuable pets on it, trying to see if they had guessable hotmail usernames. 1/10 times they did and he got the accounts and had the passwords sent there.

I think it's mostly to deal with all the temporary accounts that start as [email protected] and then get spammed for years without the user ever going back to them.

I suspect a more reasonable rule is that you have to log in or download email at least once 60 days after creation or the account get's deleted in one year.

Don't you get a Live account when you sign up for Hotmail? Those don't get deleted after 270 days; I've used my Live account (originally a Hotmail account) for Xbox Live and other services without logging into Hotmail for years now.

So I doubt it's for usernames.

According to the docs and the developer comments they do get deleted. Presumably using the account with xbox live and other services is what's keeping it active, even if you don't log into hotmail directly.

I've also already experienced both situations. When the @live.com accounts became available I registered my name, never used it, eventually forgot to keep logging in to keep it active and it got deleted. Meanwhile, the account I use for xbox live stayed active even though I hadn't logged in to hotmail in at least 2 years until a couple weeks ago.

I don't know about xbox live, but having using my hotmail login on msn via pidgin is enough to keep it active.

Wrong. My first username (that I'm pretty sure no one else has taken) was blocked for inactivity 10 years ago and never became available again.

Um, they make inactive usernames available again? It's nice except that many sites have reset-my-password buttons...

Not sure about this. Hotmail accounts are like Facebook connect accounts, and I use mine for xbox live, MSN messenger, among other Microsoft services. Yet I haven't used Hotmail in years, and when I did I'd always get the "we deleted everything so now you're fresh again" setup notice.

You don't have to use hotmail for MSN messenger, xbox live, or other services. I signed up for a windows live ID using my gmail email address. You can use yahoo too if thats what you use.

Indeed. When I signed up, however, it was the only option, so I have a legacy with it.