Why you may need to unlink services from email accounts that you want to close

Most free email services require you to sign in to the account at least once in a given time interval to keep the account active. Microsoft for instance requires users to sign in to Outlook.com every 270 days, and companies like Yahoo (365 days) and Google (270 days) require the same.
This does not necessarily mean that accounts will get deleted outright by the companies, but the possibility is there. Yahoo recently announced that it would redistribute old email addresses that were inactive for a prolonged period of time.
Now it has come to light that Microsoft is recycling Outlook.com email accounts as well. While new owners won't get any existing emails of the old owner, or contact information, or any other information of the old account, it is still important to note that this can be a security and privacy issue.
The core reason here is that the inactive email account may still be linked to accounts on the Internet. If someone else got hold of an email address, they can use the "resend password" option to gain access to those accounts. While the new owner does not know if there are any services that are linked to the account, it is likely that some may stumble upon them when they try to register for Internet services.
If they get an "email already in use" message when they try to register, they know that an account exists and that they may be able to recover it.
These accounts do not necessarily have to be inactive as well. A user may have used the email address to sign up for services on the Internet and for nothing more. The email address became inactive while the accounts may have been used regularly.
That is not the only thing that can happen though. New owners may receive emails addressed at the old owner of the email account. Since there is no protection in place to prevent this, it may happen that this happens.
What you need to do
There are two core options to protect your privacy and security.
- Don't let your email accounts become inactive.
- Unlink all services associated with the account, and notify all contacts about the change in email.
Don't let your email accounts become inactive
This is without doubt the easier option of the two. Just sign in once every 180 days or so and you should never have to worry about your account being made available again because of inactivity. If you do not want to remember passwords and usernames, use a program like Mozilla Thunderbird or a mobile email client to check emails.
Unlink services, notify contacts
Even if you do not want to use the account anymore, you still have the option to sign in every 180 days to protect it from redistribution.
If you want to get rid of the account completely, you need to unlink all associated Internet accounts first. This is done by either changing the email address on the service's website, or by closing those accounts as well.
In regards to contacts: it is important to notify them about the change, so that they do not use the old email address anymore to contact you.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!