Just curious.  If i cancel or allow my email account to become inactive and thus, deleted, does hotmail reuse my old hotmail address at some future date? why does this concern me?  people might try to email me at my old address at a future date and get someone else at the other end.  they may be hitting "reply" and someone else will my old hotmail address will see the old email string between me and the sender.  i can't imagine this could happen, but i read somewhere it does.

Hi justwondering9999999,  

I have moved your post here, as this is the proper forum for it.

Yes, accounts that have been purged are allowed to be created or use by new users at some future time.  Also, when your contacts reply to previous messages the new owner of the account will see the old email string between you and the sender.  To avoid this inform all your contacts first that you will no longer use your account before you decide to cancel or allow it to become inactive.

In your reply, you should have noted that this is a known security flaw in Hotmail.

Reuse of old Hotemail accounts was how the Twitter breakin occurred; see

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/

This vulerability was reported already in 2000:

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.03.html#subj7

When will Microsoft close this glaring security hole - isn't ten years long enough?

Hopefully it's already been closed, and I'm preaching to the choir...

Hi Conkr,

We can't confirm the exact status of an account.  Windows Live IDs can used on other services such Xbox Live, Windows Live Messenger, etc.  So even if the e-mail functions are inactive, the owner might still be using the ID to access other Windows Live enabled services.

Thanks.