[niravshah]

Twitter is pretty good at "releasing" accounts that are unused for a period of time. A couple of users mention being "screwed over" or "hacked" when losing accounts, but if you don't use a Twitter handle, you run the risk of losing it if someone reaches out to Twitter about it.

[corin_]

It seems a bit random whether they do it... I'd quite like to get my first name (@corin) which has one tweet, posted in July 2007, and no activity at all since. I appreciate their policy of not allowing you to request they kill a dormant account, but after 7.5 years you'd think it might have been released by now

[toyg]

it might have been used for private messages all this time, or for oauth logins.

[corin_]

Oauth logins possible didn't think of that, not direct messages though as isn't following anyone. After 7+ years I strongly suspect it isn't used for logins either, but could be wrong.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

For OAuth purposes, surely the profile can be renamed.

[anigbrowl]

I don't buy that story. I have had a Twitter account for years and it probably has fewer than 10 tweets, plus I go months at a time without logging in. But '@anigbrowl' is unique and meaningless enough that nobody else is likely to attempt to register it. I'm not at all worried about it being deactivated, whereas if I had '@databases' I would ensure it was hooked up to some software equivalent of a hamster wheel that would generate a steady stream of activity.

[driverdan]

They used to be good about it. Now there are lot of old, inactive accounts that aren't removed.

[Axsuul]

What's the best way to go about getting them released to you?

[toolz]

Step 1) Be important and influential Step 2) Don't be unimportant and uninfluential