You Might Be Losing Your Yahoo Email Address

You Might Be Losing Your Yahoo Email Address

By Leo Notenboom

Yahoo recently announced they will be releasing email addresses. What does that mean? Could you lose your email address?–PC Pitstop

As long as you’ve logged in to your Yahoo! account recently, you don’t need to worry about losing your Yahoo! email address. If you’re not certain, go log into it now, and you can “reset the clock,” so to speak.

I’m somewhat surprised that Yahoo! felt the need to make an announcement at all. I’m also surprised that some people are upset by this plan.

It’s something that many providers have been doing all along.

And it’s something that you should understand, even if you’ve never touched a Yahoo! account.

The lifespan of a free email account

The best way to envision this is to look at the various steps an email account might go through:

The email account is created.

It’s used for some period of time.

It stops being used. Quite literally, the account owner stops logging into it.

It’s at this point – when the account is no longer actively being used – that the free email providers begin to take action.

After being completely unused for some period of time1, the account contents are removed. All email, contacts, and whatnot are deleted irrecoverably, and new messages destined for the account are discarded or rejected.

After continuing to be completely unused for more time, the account is closed. This means that the account owner can no longer login to the account – because it’s no longer his.

After some additional time, the account ID – typically the email address – is recycled and made available for re-use. This means that someone else could come along and open a new account, completely unrelated to the original, that uses the same email address as that original – because that original no longer exists.

It’s this last step that Yahoo! has announced as happening en masse beginning in July of this year for accounts which have not been accessed in over a year.

Article Continued Here

This excerpt appears with permission from Leo Notenboom.

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