Secondary Email Account

When a user ID (that part of the email address to the left of the @ symbol) is changed or deleted, it is suspended for 90 days, and then released back into the pool of available IDs for any Comcast customer that wants to claim it.   As you have now discovered, that doesn't mean the account is not still functioning.  You just can't get at it any more by trying to sign into it using the webmail UI.  But it's still running in the background.  The reason is that the desktop client you are using keeps you signed in all the time.  I currently have a secondary account enabled in Mac Mail and Thunderbird on my iMac that I had deleted from the Comcast webmail interface back in July, and it still functions just fine.  But I'm not sure what would happen if someone else were to try and claim it.

So I just conducted another experiment---------------I deleted the Comcast account from Mac Mail, and sure enough if I try to re-create it as a new account in Mail, it gives me an error saying it can't verify the user ID or password.  However, it still works OK in Thunderbird.  So the client is what is keeping that account alive in the background.  I sent a test message to it from my Gmail account and it went through OK.  I got no error message or bounce in the Gmail account.

So I went to the next step in the experiment:  

I went into my Primary account and then tried to re-create the deleted account in the webmail.  I got all the way through until it gave me the error saying the user name is already in use.  It's been over 5 months since I deleted it, so well past the 90-day limit.

So now we know-----as long as you keep the account enabled in a client, it will stay active and apparently unavailable for anyone else to claim it.