It’s 2009. Storage is so cheap that Email providers like Yahoo are literally giving you as much space as you want. Yet we still have to deal with archaic policies that allow these Email providers to delete everything in our inboxes if, for whatever reason, we forget to login for a few months.
The time limits vary: Yahoo cuts you off at 4 months, Windows Live Hotmail at 60 days, and Gmail after a more lenient 9 months of inactivity (you can see a more comprehensive listing here). Most of them have some kind of grace period where your account enters a deactivated ‘hibernation’ state, but still retains its data. Some of them have these policies in print but rarely actually delete your account. But for others, once you cross the threshold, every Email message, photo, and file attachment is gone for good.
Take Yahoo, for example. Now that the free service includes unlimited storage, the site uses the threat of deleting your account as a way to convince users to upgrade to its premium Yahoo Plus! for $20/year (you can see the wording in the screenshot below). Since when did my data become a bartering tool?
Of course, all of these services are provided for free – none of them are obligated to give us anything. But they are also loaded with ads, and help drive users to each service’s web portal so they can access their integrated inboxes. Webmail is no charity.
Years ago, when space was relatively costly the restrictions made sense. Now that each service uses excessively large or unlimited storage limits to entice users, one would think that they’d be able to support stagnant accounts. Granted, it’s more complicated than a pure storage issue. Every account is likely backed up multiple times, which multiplies both bandwidth, processing, and storage costs. But given a choice I’d much rather sacrifice my Email’s maximum size limit if it meant I could keep my data online indefinitely.
The issue extends beyond just Email. Earlier this year a spammy chainletter proclaiming that Facebook was deleting inactive accounts (it isn’t) exploited fears of data loss. Now that more services are moving to the cloud, our most vital data (like photos and documents) is increasingly at the mercy of these web companies – an unsettling thought given the precedent set by webmail services. For these cloud-based services to thrive users will have to believe they’re good for life, not just until the company involved holds their data ransom for a revenue boost (or worse – deletes it entirely).
(Image from Failblog)
Right – so your email account you didn’t login to for 10 years, should still be available? Gee, thanks for the support, asshole.
+10
If you do not like the TOS, don’t sign up.
Problem solved.
I’m not really feeling any sympathy here either. Not only SHOULD they delete your data (as a courtesy to you), but after a year or so, they should recirculate your user name (as a courtesy to others).
it’s true that storage is getting cheaper, but it’s not free, and also, nowadays, people send video and larger files.
They rely on your usage to generate income to cover the cost, a few months is a reasonable time-span to conclude that you no longer use the service, so why should they keep your data forever? deleting it and freeing up space for more worthwhile usage makes tons of sense.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it, it’s part of the TOS. You’re not paying anything for it. Quit whinging like a housewife and blog more newsworthy articles.
Hi,
I couldnt agree with the view point of the post more ! Recently my hotmail account just got wiped out of all the precious and important data that I had been keeping in my email folders. My fault I didnt log in – usually I use my hotmail account once every 15 days or so. I have tried emailing support and help explaining to them my apologies et al however no response at all .
Ok not logging in for 10 years is one thing but admitting to missing the date by a few days here and there – i guess they should relent.
This is really the challenge – in our mashable web 2.0 world we have rigid 0.0 policies like the ones at Microsoft which simply are in apposition to what our internet is all about.
I wonder if anyone here can help me arrive at a repose to this loss. At the same time it leaves me with a lesson – dont trust the biggies withthe 0.0 policies – this time around I am going with someone else. Bye Bye MSN & Hotmail , you are about to lose a trusted loyal user !
Regards
does anybody ever call you ashish kabob?
A trusted loyal user who pays them how much?
A shit load of advertising revenue.
They’re not doing it for free because they’re nice people, there’s money to be made, and lots of it.
But that’s just it: they don’t collect ad revenue if you don’t visit the site. Why you would want to barter your eye-share for storage space, someone else’s admin errors, and a half-baked UI in the first place is more than I can see.
Why do they get away with it? Well, you answered the question in the title… they’re FREE.
Yeah, they’re ad-supported. Those ads are only viewable when you actually, you know, USE the service.
How exactly do the ads help them cover the cost of keeping all your data if you’re never looking at them?
Jesus…
Well, maybe not the TITLE of the article, but you know… somewhere.
I am not sure why there is even a post about this in techcrunch. This seems like a fair policy by free webmail. If you do not log in to your inbox for 60 days either you shouldn’t have that email address or you are using to filter your spam…. Log in once in a while, I know it could take 1 minute of your precious time.
So could gzipping inactive accounts and still having the data available. Text compresses down to what, 1/100? It’d go a long way in the customer service world, if they were concerned about more than ad dollars..
Lamest article ever.
Plus — if you rely on free email, you FAIL anyway.
Triple fail for @TechCrunch — get a life.
Anyone know if such policies also applies if your email is forwarded to another webmail account?
E.g. account1@gmail.com is forwarded to aggregator@gmail.com? Do I still regularly need to login into account1@gmail.com?
I think that if it’s really important to you, you might want to make it a point to log in once every few months. I’m sure you can spare the 15 seconds every 3 months.
That’s a good point Mike… there is a saying: “If you don’t use it, you loose it.”
No matter how many characters/digits/symbols you allow in an e-mail address, there’s still a finite number of total addresses available per domain. Maybe these companies want to free up stagnant addresses for people who will actively use their services, since there’s only so many.
Server space has nothing to do with it. If anything, they’re committed to tying up MORE server space by ensuring each address is active.
An active address is one that’s talked about, spread, and therefore promotes the service. An unused account is evidence of an unusable service.
I’ve got to agree with the others:
1. They want to free up unused usernames (especially prime ones that are coherent).
2. Disk space is cheap, not free. Learn some business sense.
3. A couple million unused email accounts being filtered for spam is going to cost you CPU wise (server power).
4. If you care, get your own domain name. If you don’t… who cares? Seriously. It’s 2009. I’d laugh at you in 2000 already.
Between having months to login, and free POP and/or IMAP options (depending on the provider), there’s no excuse for whining about the policy. You have options to backup the mail for free from a free service. If you choose not to do that AND not to stay active in the account, you know what’s coming.
This post might make more sense if there weren’t the POP or IMAP options, but that’s not the case so there’s no reason to complain.
I used to have a large webmail provider in the early part of this decade.
Inactive users are often times people that got an address to spam craigslist for websites then ditch the account when they have been blacklisted.
Those users’ accounts only receive spam and bounces.
VOILA. Your questions answered.
Must have been a slow topic day around silicon valley esta dia….:-)
I remember I was in hospital a couple months when I came out My Hotmail was gone and cleared, My Email address was ‘Reserved’ for me.
Gmail now for me
Two words… “grow up.”
Everyone is supposed to know that your email data is “critical” and “precious” when you place it in a free account with an expiration and then let it lapse? Your lack of planning does not make it an emergency for everyone else.
You are the sum total of the choices you make. Take some responsibility.
Look, I know that most of the people who read this site are tech savvy and aren’t going to let their Email accounts lapse (they also know how to set up POP3/IMAP accounts).
But many people (read: your parents) have no idea how to do that. And they don’t realize their Email addresses will expire if they forget about them for too long.
…which is exactly why I don’t let my parents use services which treat your data as if it’s their own (gmail, yahoo, msn, tool).
I’m still amazed that people use these sites for confidential or sensitive data (hello Palin).
Nothing is free.
Why are you posting an article targetting ‘parents’ and people who have no idea how to do ‘that’ on a site where 90% of readers are tech savvy?
@E because even if the readership is tech savvy, the majority of Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo users aren’t. Hence there is a story to be told as it affects a large proportion of users using these services.
It’s also worrying that people are storing all their photos and messages in Facebook now – having all that data in one place is worrying.
I agree with Jason…. and it is not just your parents!!! The email address I used in college was deleted since I had not logged in for a long time. I had been using my work email mainly and was too busy to check until it was too late. By that time, my old college emails were already deleted without warning.. without a way to get them back, even if I paid for it. Trust me, I am tech savvy.
The real problem here is 1) there is no warning system 2) 4 months is very short 3) I doubt this policy was in place when I registered for the account 10 years ago, so I had no expectation it would happen in a matter of 4 months.
I agree these free mail service provider should be able to delete your accounts eventually after non-use. But 4 months? No warning? maybe they could turn off mail after 4 months but retain the data in some wherehouse for another year or two.
This article is valuable to the readership becuase its in your best interest to know how the business practices of your competitor’s, partners, vendors and customers affect the every day person. If you disagree, perhaps its time you come out of the server closet for a breather.
@Jason:
The more important issue is that you cannot backup your data from Yahoo Mail via IMAP unless you pay for their premium account. That is the real lock-in. How about an article on that?
Dude, you knew this when you signed up. If you crib now, its too bad. Besides, most providers these days let you download email using a mail client and let you store your “precious” data offline – on your OWN disk.
I believe there’s a mathematical term fro this – called debo-ing, which was named after the husky gentleman from the classic movie “Friday”
http://www.urba...mp;defid=744345
I have gmail… Now I feel betrayed
Speak for yourself. I would much rather have my emails deleted if I haven’t logged on for nine months (I have gmail) then have worry about space. I would have to delete my emails anyway when I ran out of room. The only point you might be making, that I mildly agree with, is that web services should extend their time limit. Gmail’s nine months seems more than enough (unlike Hotmail’s).
http://en.wikip...rg/wiki/Packrat
The term pack rat is also used in English as slang to refer to a person who collects miscellaneous items and has trouble getting rid of them (a compulsive hoarder) and more recently the term Digital Pack Rat has been used to describe the same problem with digital files.
Is evident that you know shit about well anything. Crapiest post on TC ever!. You sir are an asshole.
@ Doc: You know what calling someone an asshole when you disagree, makes you? You guessed it.
You must be short on good stories to post this stuff. Golly anything you do makes digg. Silly story. 60 days is too short, leave it up to Google to be most responsible and reasonable at 9 months.
Geez, are you guys running out of legitimate gripes? Everything in the tech world must be wonderful, I guess.
1. Free service – no whining allowed.
2. Trusting my “content” to a free service provider without a backup is foolish.
3. Personally, I ALWAYS want a local copy.
I use a Mac so Mail handles it all quite well with great search capabilities. I would NEVER WANT to rely on a web service for my personal content.
4. I’ve been bagging all my Yahoo accounts because I have to hack (ie YPOPS) my way to in order to get them into my PC. I don’t want or feel a need to pay for email service. Good-Bad-Indifferent – whatever.
5. How many email accounts does one really need?
he he he… so do you want keep the data for lifetime??? What you are saying is a real nonsense. Don’t post the articles like this.
We do have some respect on TC. Don’t take that.
I couldn’t disagree more. Four
months of inactivity and you call Yahoo! threatening to – or actually – deleting your email some form of “blackmail”? Cry me a big, fat river. People who actively use an email account don’t usually go more than a few days – perhaps, at most, a week – without checking their email. Any account that is inactive after 2 months should be automatically deleted, in my opinion.
What is the purpose of an email service automatically archiving your email forever? I can think of a few disadvantages to that. It’s a security risk for the account owner who may be hospitalized, incarcerated, or dead, as unanswered messages might get the wrong person interested to know for him or herself what’s going on. If the person who owned the account used it either to collect or send spam, it’s a waste of server space to keep the account open once it’s abandoned. If the person who owned it tied it to a short-lived blog or work project, there is no reason to keep the messages archived. People who want the account automatically deleted and gone after a short time will be surprised and dissapointed to know that they have to contact the email service and request that, since it’s no longer automatically done.
The tone of this post is misleading and suggests that services like Yahoo! are deleting free email accounts all willy-nilly with no notice or warning to anyone except for “upgrade now or else” messages. That is pure bullshit. I’ve used Yahoo! mail since 2004 or 2005 – it hosts the personal email address I’ve had all those years, it hosted email for many blogs I no longer maintain, and it hosts email for the blogs I still have online. The one time I wanted an email account deleted I couldn’t do it. I had to wait until two or three months after my last login for it to finally be removed from the system.
Posts like this offend me because if I ever wrote anything this stupid on my own blogs I would be run off the Internets by an online mob bearing pitchforks, yet TC can print a post like this and everyone oohs, ahs, and genuflects before the mighty wisdom of it. Pfffft.
I have to partially agree with Jason on this. I’ve had it happen to some of my Hotmail & Yahoo accounts (many years ago), which luckily taught me a valuable lesson about the short timespan of them.
Here’s the problem.
These companies (Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail being the worst about it) didn’t and are not doing a good job of letting users know their policies. Playing with people’s data is playing with their life. Really.
And don’t even suggest the term “free” here implies that the company isn’t heavily responsible for the way in which they’re used, considering the fact that the *stability* on the top-3 providers’ parts is *implied* as being virtually infallible to most unsuspecting users. Especially if you’re a newb (and yes, this article is useful because tech people NEED to consider everything from the vantage of real people), using the big-3 is something easily taken for granted — as is the thought that you’ll be able to log into your Hotmail account some-months later and your data will be there. Except it won’t. And for some people that’s devastating, needless to say, if the address was used normally BECAUSE EMAIL IS THE FOCAL POINT OF NEARLY EVERY SINGLE SERVICE YOU USE ONLINE. Everything funnels into your email. Forget password? Sent to email. Banking slips? Private data? Email. Email. What can be even worse is to find your username possibly re-issued to someone else shortly after, because that new person will receive your private mailings from former services from that point forward — unless you’ve been active in updating all of those services. You’ve got them written/stored somewhere, right? Otherwise you better have a good memory.
In the case of Hotmail and the short lapse periods (at least years ago), that was plain dangerous/destructive of them.
1. Storing data for life does not make sense (open to privacy abuse, should someone die).
2. Short data retention policy does not make sense.
3. Short username retention policy makes even less sense.
SO WHAT MAKES SENSE?
I think a happy compromise is the following.
1. First and foremost, the provider must make it plain as day to users that if the account is important, they need to login in X amount of time or EVERYTHING WILL BE LOST. Jam that info in huge lettering upon signing up.
2. Usually, when lapses in logging in start to occur, they happen gradually. If the system notices increased lapses, start warning the user, Gmail style: notice/warning box that gets your attention.
3. After time expires, provider stores all email & attachments for another 6 months
4. Username deactivated for bounce-backs, then not released for maybe another 6 months
Of course, in the case of usernames, what’s really needed is some kind of centralized, non-profit means by which a person can prove his/her identity and own that “account” for life, for free — through which you can use an open identity with all these services. A user registry with actual gov’t-backed stability perhaps.
Needless to say, for now, if you really want to do web mail right, you need 1. your own domain 2. a system (3rd party or self-hosted) by which your data is there *according to a policy you get to set* both encrypted online and encrypted offline + backed up. Of course, you’ll have to pay and remember to renew, but with something so important it’s a must.
At least Google is being /more responsible/, as mentioned, with 9 months for free accounts. Hotmail & Yahoo are not. (Yeah, this subject gets me riled up, thinking about the past.)
So we should give people six months to have their email addresses recycled? So in six months the user name I once used can be given to someone else, and in six months if I haven’t updated my email address with EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE I have ever used or been a member of in any capacity, the person who gets my name can retrieve my passwords and gain access to anything I ever associated with that email address – just by performing a quick Google search? Brilliant! Thank you so much for that! I will definitely remember to entrust my data security to smart people like you in the future. My head is reeling from how just what a genius you are. The icing on the cake is that I should use my own domain to set up my email addresses, so that that can get hacked and my online life ruined forever. Gotta hand it to you…you have all the right answers.
Maybe just accept there is no one right answer, not for as long as hackers can find ways to circumvent them.
Google is so kind to its Gmail users giving 9 months for no activity in email accounts that’s great.
This is by far the stupided post to date. Articles that aren’t from Mike seem more like filler than content. It’s a free service!
If one day I decided to be nice and mow the neighbors lawn while I mow mine, I might get invited to dinner, or a BBQ. With that said, if one day I mow my lawn and don’t mow the neighbors, and the neighbor complains, you know where dog will be taking a crap the next day.
This is by far one of the dumbest articles I have read on TC.
So, what happens if someone dies – you are supposed to keep their mails forever?
Forget storage being cheap.. even if it was free, it still won’t make sense to have inactive accounts dangling forever on a free service. There are still costs for administration and maintenance.
Dumb. dumb. dumb.
The reasoning may not be as simple as the operating costs. Maybe you should look deeper to see there are any strategic reasoning behind it. Such as, webmail providers trying to keep their success metrics (active users per day/week/month) high and alive. The deletion risk is an important incentive for users to login regularly, which in turn contributes to the strategic metrics of webmail providers.
I agree with most here who say: It’s free, you get what you get, and if you don’t log into an e-mail for 6 months, you aren’t using it and it should be deleted. Space is cheap, but it usually isn’t free.
You go on a trip around the world for a year, you PAY someone to store your stuff in a garage somewhere. Why should email be any different?
For me, there are other advantages to the paid gmail – I get to use my own domain, which I haven’t had to change from in 13 years! Meanwhile, my coworkers all have “backup” name.companydomain@hotmail.com type accounts, that they need to change for each job they get to avoid confusion.
Back in the day, when someone said/did something as stupid as what this article is positing, we’d just say “Dude, it’s the NINETIES.” And that was all that needed to be said. Let progress pick you up by the ass, and punt you to the present with the rest of us!
I have to agree with the author here. This is very consumer un-friendly, and I think there should be a 6 month minimum before any deletions.
I believe for a nominal fee yahoo & hotmail will give a permanent ID so you don’t have to worry about losing your mail. Not sure about google.
Also the Hotmail gives you 120 days before it “cleans” your account and year before it clears your ID.
But seriously get a grip already.
Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where the neighbor is in a coma and Jerry and Kramer discuss whether its ok to just take everything if he doesn’t come out of the coma within 24 hours.
So if you get kidnapped in Mexico and are released after 5 months, Yahoo will have gotten rid of all 50 emails dating back 10 years? Talk about getting deleted!
If you dont check your email account for 3 months, it might be because the information in there or that adress aren`t really important for you. Why should the webmail provider care about it, then?
Plus, store all your stuff on the web is a really dumb thing, smart people who actually cares about their data make offline backups of it.
It’s not a question of whether the data is important. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.
It’s an enormous question about the utter failure on the part of some providers to stress the fact to end-users that their data will be DELETED, zip, zilch, gone. The overwhelming majority of regular users take it for granted that their data will “just be there” because of the way these services are viewed. Therefore, many users with multiple accounts don’t check up on some accounts regularly. Miss the cut off by one day? Ooopsies! Data gone.
It’s a huge failure of *user experience* by Hotmail/Yahoo (and Google, but at least they’ve got 9 months). Worse yet, it actually has menacing consequences because it’s data. Perception/understanding is everything, regardless if the service is “free.” One would think they’d do a better job of warning and/or scaring users because it’s in their interest to not piss off users by deleting data & they’d sell more paid accounts because the value proposition would be more blatant.
I agree, it’s totally ridiculous. You’re right to add the point about facebook-
a friend of mine had their account deleted recently (this issue has been mentioned before) and lost all their photos. At the very least a “backup your data” option is necessary. :/
Hi, First why are you crying about theses policies ? If a person don’t go into his mailbox for 60 days. it’s because he don’t use it.
Second you’ve said that the storage is so cheap, you’re right. The storage is so cheap that you can buy a 350 Go harddrive for backuping all your precious pictures that you don’t want yahoo or gmail or hotmail delete them.
The policies are for better managements cause they don’t have the time to check if everyone is using their mail. And they are clear when they say it. Your account will be deleted after XX days.
For the Pub I don’t see them anymore, i just concentrate myself on what i’m looking for and enjoy the web2.0
Thanks Kevin
Please don’t use fail as a noun
I actually WANT to pay for my gmail. Then (hopefully) I can get some level of guaranteed service if I have an issue.
I think these are vital issues. In fact GotAccess is founded on privacy and data possession – check their terms of service and you’ll be surprised.
And the major issue is what they do with your data…not just deleting it…
I’m no TC fanboy, but I agree with TC on this.
A few years ago, I migrated from one country to another. This involved not having internet access for longer than whatever the Hotmail period was at the time.
By the time I got www access up at home in my new country, my entire life had been deleted along with my Hotmail account. I was absolutely bitter and furious. I switched to Yahoo, and will never use Hotmail again.
People are looking at this more as a technology than a marketing issue. Like Michael said, the future of the world is cloud computing. For good or ill, we will all soon have all our data on the web: photos, documents, financial records, you name it. And much of this will be under the aegis of FREE services (so saying it’s not paid for doesn’t wash).
If I have to back up my own data, the whole point of using a web provider is lost. I rely on them to store it for me. That’s the point of the service. And if they make me ‘pay’by looking at ads, so be it. I just moved all my personal files and folders to OfficeLive, and started a smallbusiness using 100% cloud software. It’s great not to have to worry about physical backups or pen drives.
So this being the new business model, the only relevant question is, what do customers want? I agree keeping an account for 100 years may be too much. But deleting it after 60 days is simply stupid.
What if I’m off trecking in the Himalayas and can’t log in? What if I died and it takes my family a year to sort out probate issues and get access to my online bank, document storage or e-mail accounts? What if I’m in a coma? Or in prison for a couple of years?
I would say deletion after No LESS than 5 years is more reasonable than a mere few months.
you can never really tell what will happen here.
What really ticks me off is Flickr: I pay for a pro account. When it expired, they removed a ton of photos from my created sets. They didn’t delete them – just removed them. So when I renewed my Pro acct mere days later, I was left with the chore of having to put all those photos back in their sets! We’re talking hundreds of photos here.
IMHO making *any* changes to someone’s account w/o some very pointed and explicit warnings to their primary email account should be considered a violation of the trust that the user gave to the service, regardless of how much (or little) was paid.
How hard is it to send a reminder email? Or even two?
I think a four month user grace period is generous before all emails are deleted. However, there should be options offered for those who need it.
“Since when did my data become a bartering tool?”
Since you started providing it to, storing it on, and managing it with another company’s software, hardware, and infrastructure?
Jesus, people amaze me.
I think it’s a question of how long the accounts are kept. two months are definitely too short but 9 months is good enough. I’ve done the traveling for several months thing where checking my email goes -way- down, and i don’t check all of my accounts (i have three, personal, work, and other professional). Would it be an option to use Google Apps (where you can get up to 200 email accts for your small business for free)?
One solution to avoiding the problem of losing your long history of emails would be to have all emails automatically forwarded to an online database solution.
We currently offer an email collection feature at TrackVia (http://www.trackvia.com) that allows users to forward all emails to a database. The subject, sender, email body and attachments are all populated in the database.
You answered your own question right in your article. Weird. “But they are also loaded with ads, and help drive users to each service’s web portal so they can access their integrated inboxes. Webmail is no charity.”
Users pay for free webmail with their eyeballs, if you aren’t logging in to view the ads, why should the host keep your content?
As for when your data became a bartering tool, that’s easy: The moment you gave up control to someone else.
I’m rather particular about not losing my own data, and so I control the storage mechanism (in my case, I run my own IMAP server), and I run my own backups to ensure that not single failure will wipe out my data.
If your data important enough to you to maintain a backup then it doesn’t sound like much of a bartering tool either, does it?