At least Yahoo was forthcoming with their recycling of unused email addresses. Microsoft and their line of email services is doing the same thing but without letting anyone know in their terms of service.
Like Yahoo, Microsoft is recycling email accounts, and apparently doing so without mentioning it in service agreements for Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com.
Yahoo recently started recycling unused accounts and was harshly criticized for this policy. The company reassured users that proper measures where implemented to prevent privacy disasters like identity theft through data obtained from old e-mail.