Yahoo Mail has had a bit of a torrid time of late, with no end in sight to reports of people’s accounts being hacked and used to send spam, and the fact that it’s fast losing users when compared to rival services like Gmail and Outlook.com. Last week’s revelations that Yahoo is allegedly one of the chief facilitators behind the NSA’s PRISM spying program hasn’t done much for its reputation either, so what can the company do to reassure its users that it still cares deeply about them?

Well, to be honest, not that much, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t trying. This morning, the company announced that Yahoo Mail would be engaging in a spot of spring cleaning, resetting all the inactive Yahoo Mail IDs and putting them up for grabs again.

There’s a bit of a process however. For starters, the resetting will only apply to accounts that have been inactive for at least one year. Users will be able to snap up one of the new Yahoo email addresses and replace their current ID, but it’ll probably be on some kind of first-come, first-served basis. IDs will be put up for grabs in the middle of July, but users won’t find out if they have gotten the one they want until about a month later.

Basically, Yahoo’s attempting to curry favor with its users by allowing them to select a ‘better’ ID. Like all massive email providers, Yahoo has suffered from user ID exhaustion, with all the obvious email addresses already taken up. For example, if I want to sign up for a Yahoo account now, and I try to choose Mike-Wheatley@Yahoo.com as my name, it’ll most likely suggest “Mike-Wheatley17892002453538004370934@Yahoo.com instead, simply because that’s all there is available. Kind of dumb, especially when you think that Yahoo could have followed Microsoft’s lead and added new domains (for example, MS has @hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk, @live.com etc), but for whatever reason it never did.

“If you’re like me, you want a Yahoo ID that’s short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com,” proclaims Yahoo’s Jay Rossiter.

“A Yahoo ID is not only your email address, it also gives you access to content tailored to your interests — like sports scores for your favorite teams, weather in your hometown, and news that matters to you.”

If you happen to be one of those inactive Yahoo account holders and you want to keep that ID, be sure to log in before July 15, otherwise it’ll be gone forever. Admittedly not everyone will want to, but it’s worth bearing in mind that someone could take your old ID and potentially hack some of your online accounts if they’re linked to that old address, using a simple password reset – a vulnerability that used to be exclusive to Hotmail, but will now also apply to old Yahoo accounts. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.