I don’t think I can accurately determine how many I’ve had in my life. What with various changes to ISPs over the past decade or so, it’s probably quite uncountable. But let’s try:
Currently using
Active
3 via my ISP (two personal, one spam-catcher)
4 business
Semi-active
1 hotmail
2 mail.com
1 yahoo
Inactive or defunct
6+ business
5+ ISPs
6+ free (hotmail, yahoo, etc.)
2 from college/university
And I’m sure that I’m missing several. I haven’t counted those additional free ones that would come from specific site registrations. Total lifetime accounts must be over 30 and possibly close to 50.
I use 3:
A Hotmail account
A work account and
One with my ISP.
I can’t count how many dead accounts I have. I started using Hotmail when I could register an account with my own name, or variants of my initials (with periods and underscores). Sometimes I was using two accounts at a time to show people how Email worked. I would send one from one account to another and amaze them by explaining that all this was happening in America. I would regularly forget passwords (No-one else was using Email and the accounts would be idle for ages) and simply reregister. There are now 33 Hotmail accounts with my first two initials and lastname concatenated.
Currently Active: 7
Yahoo (2)
Hotmail
Work
ISP
email.com (exclusively for using when signing up for new things etc.)
Hotpop.com
The Hotmail,Hotpop account and my ISP account are configured on my Outlook Express and I only have to check my Yahoo mail.
Defunct ones: 4
One account @ rediffmail.com
Two old ISP accounts( no longer use thier services)
Had one account with operamail waaaaay back.
I’ve been online for a decade, so I’ve gone through a lot of e-mail in a lot of places.
Current
1 ISP account never used
12 pop accounts via 3 different domains of my own
2 pop accounts for two other websites with which I’m involved
2 Yahoo! addresses for different purposes
Countless forwards/catchalls used for various websites (amazon@teaellesdomain.com, nytimes@teaellesdomain.com)
Past
5 previous ISP accounts
2 pop accounts on my domains which have since been deactivated due to spam
9 work addresses at 4 different companies
4 Hotmail accounts, killed due to inactivity
9 AOL addresses (always kept the 5 allotted, but swapped 4 out over the years)
3 Netscape webmail accounts, killed due to inactivity
Countless (3 dozen? 4?) webmail addresses from obscure sites such as londonmail.com or gurlpages.com activated for specific purposes and killed when no longer needed
I have three accounts. Two yahoo and one from a local ISP. I haven’t used that one in about two years. Just to see, I went back to it recently and discovered it had over 5,000 spam emails collected in it! I remember getting 30 plus spams a day and that’s why I disowned it.