Originally published at: Beware Comcast Deleting “Inactive” Email Accounts - TidBITS
Over on the Apple Consultants Network mailing list, people have been complaining about a destructive new Comcast policy that could result in “inactive” Comcast email accounts being deleted, with no option for recovery. The problem is that many users have active comcast.net email addresses that are forwarded elsewhere, so they don’t consider the associated accounts to be inactive.
But Comcast does. Although Comcast has been alerting users of these accounts to the pending deletion, the email and text warnings could easily be read as phishing attempts. Finding similar phishing examples in my Spam folder took me just a few minutes.
What’s going on? In November 2024, Comcast released a new policy surrounding inactive comcast.net email accounts that states accounts that have been inactive for more than 2 years will be closed after 90 days. It reads:
Xfinity customers must sign into their Xfinity Email (comcast.net email) account(s) using the Xfinity Email website at connect.xfinity.com or a third-party client at least once every 24 months to maintain an active email account status.
Customers who don’t sign in to their Xfinity Email (comcast.net email) account(s) at least once every 24 months will have their comcast.net email designated as inactive, and they will need to sign in and reactivate it in order to maintain access.
Beginning January 2025, inactive Xfinity Email (comcast.net email) accounts will be closed after a 90-day window of notifications.
- Customers who wish to keep an inactive email account and its contents should sign in using the Xfinity Email website before their 90-day window expires.
- Once an email account is closed, the contents are not recoverable.
- Customers with an inactive email account may download inactive email data and close the email account via export.xfinity.com.
- Customers may do nothing and allow the inactive email account to be closed and data to be deleted.
- Anyone who sends an email to a deleted email account will receive an “account not found” or similar message in response.
- Customers who have an inactive or deleted Xfinity Email (comcast.net) account can still use the Xfinity ID associated with their Xfinity account to access other Xfinity apps, websites and services. Comcast may revise this policy at any time.
(Note that the official resources about this topic use the Xfinity Email name. Comcast introduced the Xfinity brand in 2010 to represent its consumer-facing services, but many people continue to refer to the service as “Comcast” or use both names. For this article, I have to switch back and forth a bit for the sake of precision, but assume that the names are interchangeable.)
To an extent, Comcast has brought this upon itself. The company allows former customers to continue using their comcast.net email addresses indefinitely after disconnecting service. That’s helpful since it gives users more time to alert contacts and update accounts. (I always recommend separating your Internet service from your primary email address to avoid this situation—it’s stressful enough to relocate to a new city, for instance, and you don’t want to be forced to switch to a new email address simultaneously.)
Regardless of whether you’re still a Comcast customer or not, there appear to be several scenarios that are more common than Comcast expected:
- Forwarding accounts: Accounts that forward all their incoming messages to another account aren’t mentioned, but it seems clear that they would be considered inactive by this policy. Forwarding would be particularly attractive to those who disconnected Comcast service but retained their email addresses.
- Third-party clients: Comcast’s claim that signing into the account using a third-party client indicates activity is where things get confusing. Many people report receiving the “Your inactive comcast.net email account will soon be closed” message even though they log in to the email account every day. One possible explanation is that the inactive accounts are actually inactive secondary users that are associated with the primary account. However, Comcast support says that the account receiving the email warnings is typically the one that is impacted. Even then, those users sometimes say that their secondary accounts also access their email regularly. Comcast’s warnings may simply be erroneous.
Regardless of your situation, you can check your account status by visiting customer.xfinity.com/settings/xid/uidemail and signing in with your Xfinity ID and password. If an account needs reactivating, sign in to the Xfinity Email website.
In an ideal world, you would be able to see that an account was inactive, and signing in would reactivate it. However, if your account status doesn’t update or you keep receiving warning messages, I recommend calling Comcast support.
I don’t have a Comcast account with which to test, but based on what I see online, I believe the safest course of action is to log in to the Xfinity Email website at least once per year. Create a repeating reminder or calendar event so you don’t forget.