Hmm... with the current limit, I think it would be safe to delete some of the first people on your list and work your way down from there. Even if a character hasn't been marked as deleted, it might no longer be active... PLUS, if it was a compromised account and SE could tell it belonged to a legitimate owner (not RMT), the access to the account could have been simply restored to a REAL person. Therefor, the character isn't gone because it was a real character.

I imagine less and less of these accounts are 'free' accounts because the beta and free trial for FFXIV is over... meaning more and more are accounts that are hacked, with new random characters created to be the 'shout/whisper' spammers. I have seen MUCH less shout/whisper spam than I used to, and it almost always happens in large cities. SE has better control of it than they did in the beginning... that's for sure. The occasional tell is not a huge nuisance to me. I don't even block anyone on the off chance that it may be a compromised legitimate account.