<p>If in the past, you have signed up and used one of Microsoft's email services, be it Outlook.com, Live or Hotmail and you haven't signed into the account for some time, now might be a good time to do so. Microsoft has started to recycle dormant account names making them available again for registration.</p><p>This was reported by PCWorld recently and in fact, Microsoft is following up on a user policy that customers have to agree upon before signing up for an account. According to the Terms of Service, users must log into the service at least once every 270 days in order to keep their service active. If a user fails to do so, Microsoft reserves the right to delete your data and cancel your access. The TOS doesn't actually spell out that they will recycle your username and make it available again, but according to Microsoft, this is actually the intent of of this agreement. Essentially, the way it works is that after an account goes dormant for 270 days, Microsoft will delete and disable the account. Then after another 360 days, this user account then becomes available for registration again.</p><p>Customers that have been learning about this policy are of course showing concern on the grounds of privacy which is easy to understand. For the sake of comparison, some companies like Google will delete dormant accounts, but will not allow that user name to be registered again.</p><p>Source</p><p><a href="http://www.coated.com/dormant-outlook-hotmail-and-live-accounts-being-recycled-10061301/">Keep reading...</a></p>