Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

I found the much more insulting thing on that thread was the Hotmail developers' insistence that user's emails should be deleted after 270 days of inactivity. This point was brought up many times (well, about the old 30-day or 90-day limits), and all the devs said was "we fixed that! it used to be 30, now it's 270".

That is so incredibly insulting. If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted. Who would stay with an email service that does that? Microsoft just doesn't get that users want to be happy. Are the $ savings MS gets from disk space of old deleted emails really that important?

Edit: Maybe this is a feature Facebook should implement. They ask for your Hotmail login and password anyway, they may as well say "Microsoft will delete your emails! But don't worry, we'll save them for you". Maybe then MS would take a hint and remove the "delete user's email now" code.

View on HN

This exact thing happened to me in 2005 - I lost 7 years of emails from high school, college, between myself and several girlfriends, chat logs I'd saved from IRC, photos, and other important notes. I was incredibly pissed and immediately stopped using hotmail for anything, including changing all my other accounts everywhere else to not use hotmail as a backup email address.

It was unbelievable to me then that they would delete your email after 30 (?) days of inactivity, and it's unbelievable to me now, especially after Gmail changed the game for them in 2004 by essentially saying that diskspace is a commodity and you can therefore store as much as you want with them (within reason) for as long as you want.

Sure, there are things in the ToS that cover Google's ass, but no Google engineer in his right mind would write code that automatically deletes someone's email after a predetermined (way too short) time period. There would be too many alarm bells going off in their head, they'd talk about it with the team, and they'd make the right call. Something tells me that with Hotmail, it was just an exec somewhere looking at a balance sheet and trickling an order down the waterfall so the revenue looks nicer.

Jaded, but goddamnit.

The same thing had happen to me. 2 months passed, lost to the mountains and wild of the hinterlands, I return and Microsoft has burned all of my letters and rented out my room. GMail was an easy choice.

A few years back I was working with a BigButNimbleCo (yes, they exist) and there was a sudden kerfuffle. It seems that the Exchange servers had started crashing because there was too much email in them, and IT was sending out warnings that stuff was going to be deleted, so save what you wanted into archive files on the file shares.

Sorry, I may not have explained this very clearly: Exchange was crashing because it held too much mail. I have no idea how many terrabytes were involved, but there fewer than 10,000 employees at the time.

I know everyone is going to say that Exchange and Hotmail are completely different code bases, but what they have in common is Microsoft's vision of what people do with email and how they do it. I'd say that deleting old mail is in Microsoft's DNA.

I've kept email since I switched from Hotmail to POP3 in about 1998. The wonderful bit is I wrote a desktop application which scans any number of hard drives and finds all mail in the main 5 formats (Mbox, Kmail files, Outlook <2003, Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Eudora). Then you can search it with SQL.

I haven't been able to find a customer for it but I love using it.

But the point is "Don't throw away all that old email, put it in a database so you can search over 100,000 messages for just a few results to look at".

While everyone is up in arms for Microsoft at deleting the emails after 270 days Google too has a policy which they can terminate your account ofter 9 months (30x9=270) of inactivity. It seems reddit needs to do a little reading up.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/program_policies...

However I'm not clear if they have it automatically delete it after 9 months regardless of the activity or if there are other conditions that factor into this.

The whole deleting emails is a bad experience though. Just another reason to back up important files.

Gmail "might" delete inactive accounts after 9 months/270 days. But if it's forwarding mail it wont delete it, unlike hotmail. Hotmail has more conditions for inactivity it seems.

I wouldn't trust any free service not to delete all my emails, either accidentally or intentionally. Hotmail supports IMAP and POP. So even if you normally use the web-interface, open up thunderbird every few months a month and sync up.

You are correct, except for "Hotmail supports IMAP and POP." No, Hotmail does not support IMAP. That was actually the source of a lot of Reddit's anger (MS devs didn't seem to understand that people want IMAP, so there won't be any support for it any time soon).

Wow. Yeah. Apologies. I did a quick google search and the first few pages were 'configuring IMAP on hotmail'... Checking again, the next few were "WHY THE HELL DOESN'T HOTMAIL HAVE IMAP?"

Anyway, hopefully they at least let you do pop without removing the message from your inbox.

I basically agree with you, but I'm guessing that the important thing isn't saving disk space, but freeing up usernames.

Don't you get a Live account when you sign up for Hotmail? Those don't get deleted after 270 days; I've used my Live account (originally a Hotmail account) for Xbox Live and other services without logging into Hotmail for years now.

So I doubt it's for usernames.

According to the docs and the developer comments they do get deleted. Presumably using the account with xbox live and other services is what's keeping it active, even if you don't log into hotmail directly.

I've also already experienced both situations. When the @live.com accounts became available I registered my name, never used it, eventually forgot to keep logging in to keep it active and it got deleted. Meanwhile, the account I use for xbox live stayed active even though I hadn't logged in to hotmail in at least 2 years until a couple weeks ago.

I don't know about xbox live, but having using my hotmail login on msn via pidgin is enough to keep it active.

> but freeing up usernames.

WHAT?! They do that? That's SO dangerous, and perhaps what made me lose a domain name three years ago! I registered a domain in 2001 with my hotmail account, and noticed in 2006 that the registration had changed to another person in Ontaio, Canada. My only guess as to how they did that (after much investigation) was that they must have accessed my hotmail account, which was dormant for probably three years (but was the account I used with my registrar). I couldn't figure out how they got into my email, and I eventually gave up the fight and got a new domain name. Now I'm waiting out the expiration on the first one, hoping I can get it back.

Do they ACTUALLY recycle usernames? Is THAT how I lost my domain name?! Someone just registered my old hotmail account back, and then probably "lost password" to the account? Fuck that makes me so mad. There's no way MS does this...does anyone know?

Pretty sure they do. I seem to remember an hacking incident from the last 2 years where access to a Gmail account was gained by requesting a password reset to the defunct Hotmail account. Gmail was so nice as to tell you which account they emailed. Not sure if this is still the case.

Yup, I think user accounts are recycled. It's got its benefits and its downsides. I think it will be interesting to see 80 years from now. I guess non-recycled usernames will just get more esoteric?

Yeah, there are a lot of characters in the full unicode set.

There are far fewer human-readable combinations. There are even fewer with fewer than 10 characters.

100%. I had a friend in High School who liked to play Neopets (www.neopets.com). He would try out tons of old accounts with valuable pets on it, trying to see if they had guessable hotmail usernames. 1/10 times they did and he got the accounts and had the passwords sent there.

If you register a domain (or anything else) with cryptoz@yourdomain.com and stop renewing yourdomain.com you're opening yourself right up for problems too.

Wrong. My first username (that I'm pretty sure no one else has taken) was blocked for inactivity 10 years ago and never became available again.

I think it's mostly to deal with all the temporary accounts that start as Spam1234@hotmail.com and then get spammed for years without the user ever going back to them.

I suspect a more reasonable rule is that you have to log in or download email at least once 60 days after creation or the account get's deleted in one year.

Um, they make inactive usernames available again? It's nice except that many sites have reset-my-password buttons...

Not sure about this. Hotmail accounts are like Facebook connect accounts, and I use mine for xbox live, MSN messenger, among other Microsoft services. Yet I haven't used Hotmail in years, and when I did I'd always get the "we deleted everything so now you're fresh again" setup notice.

You don't have to use hotmail for MSN messenger, xbox live, or other services. I signed up for a windows live ID using my gmail email address. You can use yahoo too if thats what you use.

Indeed. When I signed up, however, it was the only option, so I have a legacy with it.

"If you go help in an aid program in Africa for a while, you could come home to find 10 years of email deleted."

That is more insulting.

We have Internet here so you can check your mail.

Please don't play that card. I can imagine that the places that would need some kind of aid program don't have that at hand (f.e. fair parts of Zimbabwe & Tanzania). We all know Nigeria does have the access, and NOFI but a lot of people have suffered from Internet enabled Nigerians through Hotmail ;)

Today, I learned that "NOFI" means "no flame intended". That is, "I'm critiquing, but I do not intend any offense."

My girlfriend is going on a Field Study program with a Canadian university. She will be there for five months and have "very little" Internet access. She's forbidden from bringing her own computer, and the 40 students share a professor's laptop.

Sure, there's Internet all over Africa. It's one of the most connected continents, at least with mobile. But people going on programs there, from the West, typically don't get to access the Internet much. This is not a reflection on access to the internet there, but a reflection on how the Field Study students spend their time and money.

Please don't read into things that I said and be insulted by them. I meant nothing about how well Africa is connected, and I most certainly did mean to insult anyone.

She's forbidden from bringing her own computer

Why? That seems horribly broken.

Yes, I agree! She and I had a bit of a fight about this, actually. I think it's absurd (and they're allowed to bring cameras that are as bulky and expensive as netbooks!). But those're the rules. shrug Anyway, it's not that big of a deal in the end: they have very little free time when abroad, and most (all?) of them aren't software devs :) so they can live a few months without holding their own computers.

It seems like a size/weight limit on luggage would be the right answer there; the specific items being brought are none of anyone's business assuming they aren't illegal.

I imagine the parts of Africa that need aid may be somewhat less internet-enabled. Do you have the internet in rural areas where most aid workers would likely be stationed?

Different example: Xinjiang, the largest administrative region in China (17% of the land area) was disconnected from all internet and phone from early July 2009 until May 2010 (because China wanted to be the sole purveyor of information regarding ethnic unrest in the region). There may not be many people using hotmail in that region, but anyone who could not afford to travel 1000 kilometers to a different region for email would not have logged in during that period.

There are still many remote parts of North America that do not have Internet access, either.

I've had friends spend weeks on trips to rural Sierra Leone, and guess what? There's no running water, much less Internet access.

That's not the same as saying wherever you live in Africa has no modern facilities including the Internet.

Not that it makes it better, but I'll point out that Yahoo is now deleting inactive email accounts as well.

Right, it doesn't make the hotmail situation look better, it just reinforces how bad they both are.

What's also horrible about the yahoo policy is that there is that you can reactive the account (at least for some period of time), but the email archives are deleted. This happened to one of my accounts.

I dunno what Hotmail is based on, but Microsoft Exchange slows down with the increasing number of items in your inbox, not necessarily message size.

Maybe they're using the same message store?

No, it's a lot more complicated than that. Actually, what you're suggesting just doesn't scale.

A client that uses Exchange has to limit internal mail-boxes to 100 megs. If you want backups, move messages to a .pst and copy it to a network share...

I think that reliance on Exchange is a huge mistake.

Maybe they understand that 85% of people's email is spam anyway and don't really care if accounts get deleted... almost like saying: "you should have known better!"

There's internet, even in Africa! If you completely disconnect in this day and age for 9 months you're probably dead.

That's really not the point, though. Microsoft wrote code that will intentionally delete your email. It doesn't matter how unlikely that is or how bizarre the scenario is, that fact means I'll never use the service or recommend it to anyone. What if there's a bug in that code? Why risk writing code that deletes emails left and right? What's the point?

The Devs said "we’d love your feedback", and when people say "please don't ever delete my email", the response is basically "too bad, you have 270 days". It's insulting.

It's unlikely that the developers were the ones making that decision, you know. You're shooting the messengers.

What's a reasonable amount of time to assume a user has left and isn't coming back? Why should they hold data forever when for whatever reason it looks like you've abandoned it?

1 Year.

There are many people who make event specific emails addresses. These events are annual, so they use the email yearly.

I'd make it two years since sometimes things are off by a week or two.

Additionally, they should not delete any existing mail, but instead move all new mail at that point to spam, which I think gets deleted in one month.

This way you never lose anything you actually know about. And you have recent email just sent to you. The cost of this should be very low.

1 year is still far too short (and only a touch longer than the current 270 days). 5 years is more reasonable. It costs them so very little to keep the data, and it costs people so dearly to lose emotionally important stuff over a technicality.

That's not what I meant.

Email should be kept forever. I meant if you don't log in for a year they can delete the account.

I disagree. I can see them freezing the account - i.e. rejecting further mail to it. But if I come back after a year, I fully expect to be able to say "hey guys, I'm back, can I have my emails now?" and get at it.

Data storage is ludicrously cheap that I don't understand why there's a need at all.

Data storage is ludicrously cheap unless you cater to more people than most countries have. Years of email times 10s or 100s of millions of people probably isn't that cheap.

Drop Box reserves the right to delete free accounts after just 90 days. Is that unreasonable? Hell no. I bet they don't hold your stuff forever in case you do pay that overdue bill one day too.

I'm pretty sure you can in most places that are not extremely remote. However I disagree about the "probably dead" comment. Only so many people are connected every day to check their emails. I know many who think once a month or so - "I haven't checked my email for a while". Not all people feel a need to carry a 3g-enabled phone with them, or do silly stuff like have an instant messanger...

I expect many people to be able to completely ignore their email for a year simply because they have nothing to send and then come back to it. Standard person != tech freak.

Or you could just be burned out and wanting a period without any internet at all to get back on your feet.

9 months is just what it takes to make a baby.

There's a difference between not using the internet and not using hotmail.

I personally log into Hotmail twice a year, specifically to ensure that my account does not get deleted. I have enough things from my past that may or may not try to send me an email at my @hotmail.com address (or require it to get back in to their service) that it's just to risky to lose it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com