Many people use their old Hotmail account as a Burner spam dumping spot for businesses and websites they don’t want to give their current email address.
That makes it hard for them to implement a spam filter, when so many people are intentionally sending spam to that old account and never checking it.
But that’s how Aron Ralston’s mother found him, he told no one he was going 6 hours away for an 8 hour day hike on April 26, 2003. She was in Englewood Colorado May 1st answering the security questions to his email account, used his email to reset his bank account password, and found out his last purchase was at a grocery store in Moab Utah. She sent search & rescue to that location where they found his red Toyota truck was found 2 hour drive away near Blue-John Canyon National Park, sent up a rescue helicopter and he was lucky to be seen after amputating his arm to get out of the crevice 5 days after he was pinned under that 800lb boulder. Even a helicopter with a FLIR thermal camera likely would have never found him in that narrow crevice under a boulder.