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Franziska Bumiller, Sarah Delgado Rodriguez, Lukas Mecke, Verena Distler, Florian Alt
Too Many Zombies: Exploring Challenges and Motivations for (Not) Deleting Unused Online Accounts
In CHI '26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 14, 2026. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. (bib)

Unused online accounts (âzombie accountsâ) pose avoidable privacy and security risks by retaining personal data that may be exposed in breaches. Yet, little is known about when and how to effectively prompt users to delete them. This work investigates the challenges users encounter when attempting to delete zombie accounts. We conducted two online studies with U.S. participants via Prolific: the accounts study (N = 120) to identify common zombie account categories, and the challenges study (N = 100) to examine usersâ motivations, perceived abilities, and preferred moments for deletion. Participants reported high self-efficacy but underestimated the number of zombie accounts they had. We identify promising opportune moments â such as when updating account information or setting up a new device â and evaluate potential triggers, including breach notifications and data sensitivity. This work contributes an empirical characterization of end-users' diverse challenges related to zombie accounts and design recommendations for future deletion-support tools.