It has been revealed today that Microsoft is currently in the process of quietly recycling older Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com email account addresses and putting them back into circulation.
Microsoft has for a long time recycled older Hotmail accounts but now the recycle process has rolled out to other Microsoft services Microsoft has confirmed to Webwereld, a Dutch IDG publication this week.
Yahoo has been recently criticised for using the same policy on their Yahoo accounts, which brought up concerns over privacy and identity theft. Microsoft does not mention email account names will be recycled in their terms and conditions, but Microsoft does confirms that this is their policy for closed account and email addresses.
Whilst owning a Microsoft Hotmail account users are required to access and log-in to their accounts at a minimum of every 270 days to keep the services active. Otherwise Microsoft has the option to cancel access to their service and permanently delete the data within your account.
Reports are already coming to light of older account privacy issues where emails are being sent to a new owner, but were intended for the previous owner and Yahoo was recently reported to be experiencing the same issues with its accounts.
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