I guess most people at some time or other have used one of the free mailbox services. Of course not everything is free and you get to see advertising at no extra charge and if your mail service is one of the common "big ones" then you will also get lots of additional mail that you don't actually want (you know...)

Well it has been quite a while since I logged into one of those free accounts and I had had a series of follow up training emails that I hadn't quite got around to evaluating.

Imagine my "surprise" when I logged in a short while ago and I found ... nothing. My account had been deactivated and all
the messages cleared out. Oh well...

So what are the lessons here?

1. Don't leave mail unread in a free account if it has any perceived value.

2. Don't use free accounts as a storage medium for mail you have read if you want to keep it.

3. Login within the terms of the account so that your account remains active.

It may be possible to have a third party program link to your mail in a free account so you can see what is on the server and manage your mail without specifically going into your account via the web e.g. Outlook Express will download mail from Hotmail accounts and I use Mailwasher to connect to multiple accounts so that I can read mail on the server first and decide if it is "keep or delete" before downloading it to my PC. Mailwasher will also connect to Hotmail. (I just checked their site and it currently under reconstruction. You may want to check it again or go there and add yourself to their notification list.)

Still, these accounts do have their purpose so do use them where necessary. Just know that the terms are and operate
within those.