Username recycling, thoughts?

[truemagic]

For a long time I was against username recycling until I've accidentally deleted my free Proton account using preferred username just to know I'll never get it back. It was 10 years ago and I'm sure nobody is going to use it because I can actually register my preferred username in any of today's new email providers. So I was always hoping to get my preferred username back with Proton as I sometimes really want to use back Proton as my daily driver, for one reason or another.

Despite this conflicting mindset, I can imagine why Proton is now considering to release or recycle these usernames. On one hand I can finally get my username back if that's to be implemented, on another I'm actually cautious of this approach -- what if I stopped paying or using Proton (or any providers) one day -- will my username which still has ties to say my banks (assume I forgot to unlink it as bank nowadays actually rely more on phone number and apps), will my confidential information unknowingly sent to a stranger who's now a new owner of my old username?

What's your thought on this?

Discussion: Reducing username exhaustion
Hey everyone,

As Proton continues to grow to hundreds of millions of users, occurrences of people not getting their preferred username is increasing. At the same time, we have on our system millions of user accounts which were improperly registered. In the very early days of Proton, before we had anti-abuse systems in place, millions of accounts were created by scripts that registered Proton accounts in bulk in violation of our terms of service. These accounts were typically detected soon after registration and disabled so they have never been used.

In order to alleviate the exhaustion of Proton?s username space, we are considering to release these usernames. Note, some usernames, in particular high value ones with common names (e.g. firstname@proton.me) have been disabled for close to a decade, but actually get email traffic as over the years, people randomly enter them into email forms across the internet (they even end up in breach datasets as a result). If you go to claim one of these common emails, keep this in mind.

No decision has been taken yet on releasing these usernames. At this stage, we are first collecting community feedback about this. Thank you for reading and we look forward to seeing your thoughts in the comments.

Stay safe,

Proton Team

[jeffpan]

most providers recycle their usernames. including fastmail, aol, yahoo etc.
but gmail and runbox never recycle usernames.

[ankupan]

How you got this message ?

On their blog or mailing list or support reply ?

Originally Posted by truemagic

Discussion: Reducing username exhaustion
Hey everyone,

As Proton continues to grow to hundreds of millions of users, occurrences of people not getting their preferred username is increasing. At the same time, we have on our system millions of user accounts which were improperly registered. In the very early days of Proton, before we had anti-abuse systems in place, millions of accounts were created by scripts that registered Proton accounts in bulk in violation of our terms of service. These accounts were typically detected soon after registration and disabled so they have never been used.

In order to alleviate the exhaustion of Proton?s username space, we are considering to release these usernames. Note, some usernames, in particular high value ones with common names (e.g. firstname@proton.me) have been disabled for close to a decade, but actually get email traffic as over the years, people randomly enter them into email forms across the internet (they even end up in breach datasets as a result). If you go to claim one of these common emails, keep this in mind.

No decision has been taken yet on releasing these usernames. At this stage, we are first collecting community feedback about this. Thank you for reading and we look forward to seeing your thoughts in the comments.

Stay safe,

Proton Team

[truemagic]

Originally Posted by ankupan

How you got this message ?

On their blog or mailing list or support reply ?

From their official Reddit.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/...me_exhaustion/

[truemagic]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

most providers recycle their usernames. including fastmail, aol, yahoo etc.
but gmail and runbox never recycle usernames.

I kind of understand why but I think it would be best if there's a grace period of at least 1-2 years before a deleted/inactive address to be released again. But 1-2 years might not be enough too if confidential emails still flow through that mailbox without your knowledge.

[TenFour]

I personally don't like username recycling. I have had to wind up the affairs of several people who passed or became disabled and important messages continue to arrive for years afterward. Luckily, I have been able to keep email accounts going, but I can easily imagine usernames getting into the wrong hands. Frankly, I think we need to move on from worrying about usernames. It would be far better if our email addresses were anonymous in the first place and instead we could just add our real names to messages as needed. But, you would still have the problem if email providers recycled those addresses.

[truemagic]

Yes I don't like it too, but paid email services more often than not, recycles them.

So far I can only think of a few others than Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo that don't recycle usernames (for now) even if you stop paying -- can't really find a list for this easily, may as well list them myself.

ProtonMail
Tuta (not sure about this one but I'm pretty sure it doesn't release them immediately)
Runbox (as Jeff mentioned, haven't used it myself)
inbox.eu (from my personal experience, I can't get back my username)

Appreciate if you all can add to this list (other than Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo)

[TenFour]

Of course that is one advantage of using your own domain. The names won't be recycled until you give up the domain! I'm pretty sure PurelyMail doesn't recycle names, but they tend to be quite responsive so I would just ask them: contact@purelymail.com

[dryoldlime]

We'd imagine most forum members already found online pages such as these two, discussing the recycling of email usernames:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/an...esses-question

https://windowsreport.com/your-outlo...tive-360-days/

[Bamb0]

I really dont see a problem.......

Like on Yahoo my older email account expired I guess cause I didnt sign in for X amount of time..... It wont let me create a new acct with that same handle.... Why not??

Its bloody stupid!!

[dryoldlime]

Originally Posted by Bamb0

I really dont see a problem.......

Like on Yahoo my older email account expired I guess cause I didnt sign in for X amount of time..... It wont let me create a new acct with that same handle.... Why not??

Its bloody stupid!!

Try a search, "Does yahoo ever recycle usernames?" and look for anything listed which you find interesting.

[Bamb0]

I guess I could try but why the big deal??




If amber@yahoo.com was deleted years ago,why cant it be re-created???

[dryoldlime]

Originally Posted by Bamb0

I guess I could try but why the big deal??




If amber@yahoo.com was deleted years ago,why cant it be re-created???

Depends on if you care about the services' reasons or not.

[Tsunami]

I would not mention an email address in here, as it may be active and lead to someone not affiliated to EMD being spammed.

I don't mind username recycling personally. If there is a service where it doesn't exist, nice, but it's not an important criterium for me.

Also, from the provider's point of view, I can understand they want to have as many names available as possible.

So let's say I'm quite neutral on this issue.

[TenFour]

One thing I have discovered is that emails remain in use for a long time after you think you've abandoned them. Not sure if they would still do this, but at one time I registered an address with FM on one of their other domains, then closed that account. After about ten years I had another FM account and they let me reactivate that old address and immediately email started flowing in from all sorts of people and things I had long ago forgotten about. In other cases I have changed emails with major companies and they still send important mail to the old address for years. I've even called customer service and they couldn't fix it. Things like this make me wary of recycling addresses.