People often ask us why they cannot sign up with their preferred username, even when it belongs to a deleted account.
However, this is an important security measure. Deleted usernames remain blocked to prevent:
🎭 Impersonation. A bad actor can use your old address to impersonate you in your network.
👎Misdirected email correspondence. Someone you know could reveal their contact information, or information meant for you, to a complete stranger by sending an email to your old address.
@protonmail It's VERY important to explain this to people. Most don't seem to realize how old social media accounts get hijacked — the one who does that just figures out the email address the account originally was registered to, registers it again if it was deleted and does a password recovery procedure — that's it, they are in!
@m0xee Exactly!