An application service server provides hosted services to clients. Upon receiving a request to delete a user account associated with a user of the hosted services, the server deactivates the user account to prevent the user from accessing the user account for a predefined probation time period. If the server receives an account revival request before the predefined probation time period is over, the server then undoes the deactivation and transfers the user account's status from “inactive” to “active”. If no account revival request is received at the end of the probation time period, the server then deletes the user account from the client-server environment.