i'm sure the former owners of 'edent' are ecstatic about your hobby.
I imagine, somewhere, a family with a dead relative, 'Emily Dent' in my head-cannon, is trying to login to their edent to download the family album to no avail.
I imagine, somewhere, a family with a dead relative, 'Emily Dent' in my head-cannon, is trying to login to their edent to download the family album to no avail.
I'm sure there are some accounts which appear inactive - but have the user regularly logging in an performing invisible actions like upvoting, private messaging etc. I would not expect those accounts to be recycled.
Then maybe they should include that in ToS, See how many signup.
Telegram - https://telegram.org/faq#usernames-and-t-me
NPM - https://www.npmjs.com/policies/disputes
Github - https://help.github.com/en/articles/name-squatting-policy
Most sites have similar wording.
The first paragraph of your post... "I quite often sign up to things just to snag the name."
GitHub: "GitHub account name squatting is prohibited."
Telegram: "we reserve the right to recall usernames assigned to unused bots and channels, as well as openly squatted usernames"
NPM: "Don't squat on package names, user names or organization names."
Dick move.
They often already claim ownership over every single byte you send them, disavow any responsibility for their actions, and in the cases where local laws force them to be responsible, will force arbitration on you. Half of my digital life would be lost right now if I did a $1 chargeback against Google and there is literally nothing I could do about it aside from proactive things like leaving their platform beforehand.
The funny thing is - dang (AKA gruseom) appropriated his username from a dormant account:
But, more seriously, I've only claimed inactive accounts. If There was activity on them - or any content - I'd be less inclined to proceed.
I know Facebook and Twitter have memorialised account options which prevent them being taken over. I wonder how many other sites are so considerate.
Here in the UK, it is common for phone numbers to be recycled. Which is distressing when you start receiving text messages from a dead relative.
I think it'd be helpful to have a better definition of "inactive." If the user hasn't posted anything ever, and they don't respond, then sure, that's hard to defend. I think that's fair. But if the user has posted content/code/whatever, it's unfair at best and ethically reprehensible at worst, especially in cases where there isn't a memorialized option, to take over their account just because they don't respond to an email within the window of the ToS. There are lots of things that are technically allowed by law or policy that don't make one that takes advantage of them any less of a subjectively terrible person.
If you had approached this from a perspective of "look what can happen to your account" as a security research experiment, that would have been received better than "look at all the people, including those deceased/incapacitated people whose loved ones may be heartbroken, that lost their accounts to me so that I can have a vanity username."
NPM - the account had no activity on it. No code, no linked accounts, and no avatar.
SoundCloud - completely dormant account. They'd posted no content. They had no public activity.
Telegram - user didn't appear responsive. I hold my hands up on this one, it might have been someone using the account.
Those were the only three accounts I could claim. I was not able to claim any accounts which were in use, or had content on them.
And, like you, I think these services should have a better way of protecting accounts.