Summary: MSN Hotmail will delete your information, and even delete your account, if you don't use it often enough. I cover those numbers, and what you should really be doing instead anyway.
I'm about to go on a trip for a while, and I want to make sure I don't lose any of my on-line information. I keep a lot of important emails and contact information in my MSN Hotmail account. If I don't login for a while, how soon will Hotmail discard it?
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You keep important things in your Hotmail account?
And only in your Hotmail account?
SIGH
In case you haven't guessed, that's one of my pet peeves. Let's look at why, and what you should be doing. And we'll answer your question too.
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The answer to your specific question is easy. From MSN Hotmail's on-line help:
If you don't sign in to your Hotmail account for more than 30 days, or within the first 10 days after signing up for a new account, all messages, folders, and contacts are marked for deletion, but the account name is still reserved. If the account stays inactive for a further 90 days, the account name is permanently deleted.
Let's analyze that a bit.
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If you create a Hotmail account, and then don't use it for 10 days, your email and contacts are deleted.
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If you've been using your Hotmail account and for some reason fail to login for 30 days, your email and contacts are deleted.
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If you fail to login for 90 days the account name will be deleted - meaning that someone else could come along and create a new account, reusing that same name.
What's this "marked for deletion" thing? What it means is that your email might not actually be deleted on (say) the 31st day of inactivity - but it could be, when Hotmail gets around to it.
And once deleted, it cannot be recovered.
So now that I've answered your question, why am I so concerned about you keeping important things only in your Hotmail account?
Because I regularly get reports of people losing important information from their MSN Hotmail accounts. Be it because of account inactivity as I've discussed here, connectivity issues, accounts being lost or hacked ... it's a regular occurrence.
And there's no recourse.
I strongly encourage you to read my article on free email accounts: Are free email services worth it? for more details, and what I believe you need to be doing instead.
But if you insist on staying with only Hotmail, then yes, make sure you login at least once every 30 days, or your information my be irretrievably lost.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - Are free email services worth it?
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Ask Leo! - Messages deleted on HotMail: can I get them back somehow?
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Ask Leo! - Why doesn't MSN Hotmail save my Sent Mail?
Article C2821 - October 25, 2006
How can I open my e-mails.I have been a member of msn since 1996.I have new e-mails and I cannot even read my new ones.I can see senders but I cannot open or read them.Do I need to pay every year or did I cancel my account accidentally?I need answers to these questions.ASAP
Posted by: Imelda J.Grantham at November 11, 2008 12:29 AMWhere did my email account go, it just stopped working.
Posted by: Anne Alban at November 25, 2008 6:02 PMI have a msn account,I used to have in my account that I could send pictures faster I just cant think of it.I think it cost $19.95 a year can you help me I mis what ever that was.Thanks Dave
Posted by: David Banzhof at January 12, 2009 11:07 AMI have had this e-mail address for 7 years and now you cancel it. what it up. I got no notice. now I do not have an E-mail address & can not get into it.
20-Jan-2009
I want to keep Windows Live Photo Galley, But I want to delete my MSN account cause I don't use it.If I deleter, will I loose It?
Posted by: John W. Miller at February 2, 2009 10:22 AMI just got Quest yesterday and I cannot pick up my e-mails from the [personal email address removed] address. What has happened to them? There are about 60 or more I haven't even had the chance to read yet. When I put in [personal email address removed] it gives me the quest hotmail address. I need to get them back. I don't want to be sorry I went to Quest.
Posted by: Bev Tonander at February 7, 2009 6:48 PMwhen I try to forward an e-mail I keep getting asked to verify my account.How do I do this?
Posted by: raymond simms at March 20, 2009 6:47 AMI unknowingly opened a Live.com account and can't open my hotmail account now.I have a lot of unread mail in that account and don't want to lose them.Pls. let me know how to recover them.
Thank you.
07-Apr-2009
I acquired the above address about two months ago, about the time I acquired a computer. The first odd thing I noticed was McAfee insisted on calling me by XXXX name and wouldn't/couldn't straighten it out. I resolved that by using TrendMicro.
Then I found that Ebay and Dell Store also insisted I was XXXX name and Ebay still does. Too bad, plenty more will gladly accept my money.
The topper was when I received a credit union monthly statement Emailed to my address under name XXXX. I didn't open the statement and apparently the credit union corrected their records, after I notified them.
This explains what happened with my new Email address. Thanks.
Posted by: Ed Courtney at April 13, 2009 4:45 PMI cancelled my Hotmail account manually. How long before it's deleted?
Posted by: Barb at July 9, 2009 7:15 AM