Like Yahoo, Microsoft is recycling email accounts, and apparently doing so without mentioning it in service agreements for Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com.
Yahoo recently started recycling unused accounts and was harshly criticized for this policy. The company reassured users that proper measures where implemented to prevent privacy disasters like identity theft through data obtained from old e-mail.
Microsoft, however, for years has had a similar policy for reuse of Hotmail accounts. The policy has been extended to other Microsoft-branded online services like Windows Live ID and Outlook.com, Microsoft has confirmed to Webwereld, a Dutch IDG publication.
The Microsoft Services Agreement mentions that users are required to log in to their Microsoft accounts "periodically, at a minimum of every 270 days, to keep the Microsoft branded services portion of the services active." Otherwise "we may cancel your access" and "your data may be permanently deleted from our servers."
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