[jrs99]

Good analogy. Another one is email. If you used an email address for personal conversations and commercial transactions, that should not entitle you to keep the email address. You should give your email address to another person that wants it.

For example, I used one email for most of my life. But recently, I stopped using that email address, and have used another one due to wanting to boycott that company. Since I no longer use that email address, I should have to give the password to another person. This is just the right thing to do in all cases.

That would FREE UP a lot of email addresses. If you have any email addresses that you do not need, you are obligated to give your password to another person. If you don't, then they can't use email.

Just make sure that if you use that email to sign in to other websites using that email and password combination, go to all of those websites and notify your friends that you are giving your email to someone else and you are not the same person if you see future comments using that name.

[gareim]

I'd have a hard problem going to every single website where I ever made an account and changing the email preferences.. Assuming I'm a normal human being, there are bound to be sites that I forget about and someone dedicated enough could then get access to my accounts on those sites.

Not a security risk I'm willing to take, when I could simply leave that email address dormant. There's not really a huge shortage of good email addresses if you're willing to pay $10 a year for your own domain.

[eonwe]

You might want to mark up your sarcasm slightly better as people are already falling for it in other posts you made.

Poe's law and all that.

[aestra]

Some email providers actually already free up dormant email addresses for the public to register again. This poses a problem for exactly the reasons you described. I believe hotmail does, for example.