Warning: Yahoo is releasing old email addresses!

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hello,

If you have or had a Yahoo mail acocunt that you care about please take a moment to make sure that it's still active.

Yahoo is going to release and make available for re-registration all old email addresses that have been inactive for over 12 months.

Pro: You might have the chance to get a cool or short username @yahoo.com

The cons include the fact that someone else can now get your old email address and possibly start receiving email or gain access that could be used to compromise your other accounts.

It seems Yahoo is assuming that everyone else will put processes in place to deactivate accounts when Yahoo says an email address is no longer valid & likely changing ownership.

Yahoo said:
Our goal with reclaiming inactive Yahoo! IDs is to free-up desirable namespace for our users. We’re committed and confident in our ability to do this in a way that’s safe, secure and protects our users’ data. It’s important to note that the vast majority of these inactive Yahoo! IDs don’t have a mailbox associated with them. Any personal data and private content associated with these accounts will be deleted and will not be accessible to the new account holder.
To ensure that these accounts are recycled safely and securely, we’re doing several things. We will have a 30-day period between deactivation and before we recycle these IDs for new users. During this time, we’ll send bounce back emails alerting senders that the deactivated account no longer exists. We will also unsubscribe these accounts from commercial emails such as newsletters and email alerts, among others. Upon deactivation, we will send notification for these potentially recycled accounts to merchants, e-commerce sites, financial institutions, social networks, email providers and other online properties.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Deactivating inactive accounts isn't new, and not an issue.

Releasing the inactive accounts to be registered by someone could cause problems for some people.
 

mike1977

Valued Member
It's brand new to Yahoo

Maybe for accounts never closed manually by the user.

But I've closed an account in the past, and was able to sign up for the username again because it was recycled.

This has always been at the account termination page:

[SIZE=-1]In most cases your account will be deactivated and then deleted from our user registration database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity. Additionally, due to the limited number of names available, we may allow other users to sign up for and use your current Yahoo! ID and profile names after your account has been deleted.


I guess what's new is they are starting to recycle names in real time as soon as the user name hits the date for it to be recycled, instead of occasionally running a purge every once in a blue moon?

[/SIZE]
 
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