how do i tell if a hotmail account is no longer in use or when
somebody last bchecked their messages

Hi Marcco,

Hotmail help files state:

"Free Hotmail accounts become inactive if you do not sign in for 30
days, or within the first 10 days. If your account stays inactive for
a further 90 days, it is permanently deleted."

So if an account has stopped working, this is quite likely due to
inactivity.

I know of two websites which offer a free email verification service,
where you can find out if any email account (including Hotmail) is
still active:

Verify Email
http://www.verifyemail.com/

Schwarzl
http://www.schwarzl.com/mailcheck.html

I tested these with my current and expired Hotmail accounts, and they
are accurate.

It would be impossible to check when anyone last checked their email
account, regardless of which email service they use, unless the
administrator of the service were to tell you.

An easy way to tell if a specific email has been read, is by including
a unique image, hosted on a server you have access to. By checking the
logfiles of the server, you can see if and when the image was
accessed, which means the email was opened.


I hope this has helped!

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

Awesome, haven't used google answers before, but this was excellent,
concise and spot on.