Twitter wants to release inactive accounts again
Twitter will soon delete and unblock accounts that have been inactive for an extended period of time. This is the first broad-based action of this kind since the service was founded in 2006.
Users who have not used their accounts for more than six months have been receiving emails since Tuesday evening asking them to log in with their profile data by December 11. Otherwise, their account names (such as @Twitter) will become available to others again. It is not necessary to actively tweet - a registration is sufficient.
But that doesn't mean you can go hunting for freed-up account names anytime soon. Deleting the profiles will take some time, a Twitter spokesperson told technology blog The Verge. It is unclear what will happen to profiles of users who have died. Twitter does not have a function to memorialize accounts of people who have died, as is the case with Facebook, for example. However, a solution for this is being considered, the spokesperson said.
The cleanup could also make attempts to manipulate public opinion with the help of fake profiles more difficult. According to IT security experts, one approach taken by the Russian-directed campaigns in the course of the 2016 US presidential election was to reactivate large numbers of accounts set up years ago. (SDA)
