hotmail / outlook does still delete email from inactive accounts, and then the account itself. you have to log in every <270 days (9 months) to keep the system from deleting your mail and in <12 months to keep your email address/account alive.[1] but you will get emails to your secondary email address as a warning before this happens. gmail also does the same, but likely on a longer time horizon[2].

[2] I worked on outlook.com and http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-...

[2] https://www.quora.com/Will-Google-deactivate-my-Gmail-accoun...