I believe that closing and abandonment are similar processes, and follow the same general sequence of events, but remember, this is totally up to each service provider and can change without warning or notice. Most free services like Yahoo! and others wait at least 30 days, and most wait much longer. If you do abandon or explicitly close your account, exactly when it’s returned to the available pool of names varies greatly.įor example, if you close your account with your ISP, they could make your ID available again the very next day if they wanted to - and I’m sure some do.

The same is generally true for all multiple-service providers, including Google and Yahoo!. You can’t close only your Microsoft email account while keeping your OneDrive account with the same email address. Using any of these services keeps the entire account active. For example, your Microsoft account is at once an email account, possibly your Skype account, your OneDrive account, and perhaps even your computer’s login account. Things get a little confusing when people use multiple services from the same provider. Even if you go through the provider’s steps to cancel an account, there’s often a grace period during which you can change your mind, log in, and “un-cancel” the account. As if it had never been used before.Īll someone has to do is sign up and ask for it.įor most services, if you log in again before time runs out, it indicates you’re not “abandoning” the account, and resets the clock. When you close or abandon your account with any online service provider, they typically make your abandoned user name and email address available again after some time. It’s safer not to close or abandon email accounts, but rather check in just often enough to keep them from being reassigned. While they would not have access to the previous contents of your account, they would have access to email still being sent to that email address and could use it to try to impersonate you. When you close or abandon an email account, it’s possible that after some time your user ID or email address could become available for someone else to use.

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