Friends and co-workers tell me I open them like they were Swiss accounts, but I’m guessing I’m far from a record holder in most rooms.
Currently I have about 5 active ones. There’s my
1- personal email (where friends and family send messages [and in the case of my sister and cousin the damned “pass this on to 15 people or the cute little pug puppy will be killed” stuff])
2- my employer supplied work-email that I use only for work related stuff
3- a Message Board email (the one that’s on my profile)
4- a Listserve email (gmail is great for listserves as it has however many GBs of storage and it’s easily searchable, and often the items on listserves are of no interest to you when they come in but may be 5 months down the road)
5- my “registration” email that I use mainly for forwarding large files (the picture heavy several GB variety) so I don’t have to use up space on the others and whenever I have to supply an email address to register for a place I don’t want newsletters and “Discount on Canadian Penile Enhancement Drugs by Water Sluts at the World’s Largest Casino” emails from those they share email addies with from then on.
God knows how many inactive ones I have, mostly from internet services I’ve used over the years (mindspring, compuserve, aol) and those I set up during transition and forgot about (yahoo, hotmail) and haven’t checked in years. Then there’s myspace and facebook and other websites that have email automatically so that pornbots won’t be homeless, but the five above are the ones I ever actually check, and I only check numbers 1 and 2 on a daily basis.
I have just 2: work and personal. There are a couple of old work accounts, from previous jobs, that I’m sure are defunct, and I suspect that there are some personal ones from 8 or more years ago that I’ve forgotten about and would not have a clue how to get back to them.
1 work
1 friends/family
1 internet interactions I actually want to track
1 miscellaneous for places that require an email address but I don’t care if I ever read anything from them.
I have a Yahoo! address that I got about ten years ago.
I have my personal address at my own domain that I use.
I have one that I use for the Unofficial Straight Dope Out Of The Park Baseball League
I have one that I use for a blog that I write
I have one from grad school
I have another one with my last name in the domain name that I use for people who can’t remember my primary email address.
I have another that I last used for a job search when I was out of work two years ago. I haven’t checked it in a while, but I know that it is still active.
I have a school alumni account, a personal account that I’ve had for years, and another for my job. Creating another for online business transactions doesn’t sound like a bad idea, though.
It depends on how you count. I have my personal account. At work I have one with my name, but at least two other ones are forwarded to me. Oh and my school one that is forwarded to my personal.
One is my address here which I also use for porno and sketchy sites.
I have one that is my ISP provider which I have but discourage people from using unless they want to send me some huge file.
My main one is a yahoo account that is my name and I encourage everyone to use because if they can remember what my name is, they can email me, plus it’s a web based email account easily accessible any where on the planet.
Personal biz #1 & #2 (resume, biz contacts, bank, etc)
Spam dump
Crap dump (given to and used mostly by certain acquaintences and select relatives – anyone who I initially suspect of suffering from Mindless Email Forwarding Disorder) which gets more mail than the rest of 'em combined.
Work (auto forwarded to personal biz #1, even though I quit 3 months ago. Apparently, IT didn’t get the memo.)
Just counting those I remember the existence of and password to, six.
Three. One for the conducting of business related to my university work, one to draw spam and to use in many places where I have to provide an address but do not wish to read the mail received as a result, and one for more or less everything else.
Another for personal that used to be the primary personal account, but that was before Gmail and obviously now Gmail is better. You would think I would have gotten around to setting this account to forward to gmail, but instead I end up checking it once a month or so.
A yahoo account that I got ages ago, and now its purpose seems to be for logging on to flickr and various other services that are somehow related to yahoo. It’s possible the email account itself is no longer active, but from past experience I’m pretty sure it will reactiviate if I try to log in.
First (main): Gmail account that friends and family use. This is also for the sites I am a member of that send me things that are actually useful/interesting.
Second: ISP account good for putting on resumes and official forms, giving to the utility companies to receive e-bills etc. Also for signing up for sites/services that don’t like hotmail etc.
Third: Signing up to places I’m only going to need access to once or twice, places I suspect are probably going to spam me, signing up to anything I don’t necessarily want associated with my known addresses . And for giving to people who I need to be in contact with but don’t want to give my main addresses to. Yeah, I’m funny like that.
Two personal that I use regularly (one of them gmail)
One official looking with real name and stuff for official correspondence (rarely used).
One almost unused on anonymous Russian server, just in case of collapse of civilization or gmail being compromised (also rarely used, mostly for Russian newsletters).
Two at work (one for my institution and one for project I’m involved with).
. And for giving to people who I need to be in contact with but don’t want to give my main addresses to. Yeah, I’m funny like that.