I have to agree with Fred on this, even though it kind of sucks to have to make a new account.
I know from previously that Fred had to use a placeholder username for a lot of the old users/threads and that looks really weird (what was it called... Backupuser ?).
So the negative is that I had to make a new account, on the plus side nobody else will be able to use/missuse it.

I do suggest that if you change (create) a new user and you know that you will no longer control your old email tied to that user that you notify Fred or a forum admin so they can lock the old user (just to avoid anyone impersonating you later).
AFAIK Google does the same with gmail, a deleted account can not be recycled/re-registered to prevent impersonation.
However...
There is one part though I wish Fred will be able to fix at some point, and that is the username for the purebasic.com download page.
For me right now it is stuck on my old email, luckily I was able to change the email and pass though, but it's still weird to login with the old email as username.
A "quick" fix would be to just allow me to login using my email instead of my username; that will just change the login front end but allow the backend to remain unchanged