I have a nice little income stream working as a slumlord in GeoCities.
My oldest and second oldest email addresses are from companies that are defunct. At some point i bought a domain, myname.us, and mail sent to that address has reached me ever since. But i don’t actually own a mail server, so that address doesn’t play well with the Gmail interface. So i use fastmail, a Canadian company that sells email. They have good spam filters, and i can access my email through any browser or through most email apps. (Including the Gmail app, although i don’t like it for various reasons.)
I also have a Gmail account, because i need it as my id for my Android phone and to access Google drive. But i mostly don’t use it for email.
I have a Yahoo account from back when it was my main front page. A long time ago I tried to use it only for signing up on websites, so all of the spam would go to the Yahoo email, and keep my active Verizon email inbox clean. But that ship sailed…
I did set up a handful of Gmail accounts, for demonstration purposes for work products, but have never used one actively.
So, my day-to-day is still Verizon (which got folded into the AOL system, but kept the original addressing).
My first email was AOL but I lost that in the 2001 divorce. I moved to Yahoo which is my emergency backup email. Gmail is my primary.
When I graduated from college, we couldn’t keep our email addresses. It was only later that they allowed students to keep their college addresses, and then allowed alumni to get email addresses from that domain as well.
If I still had that one, it was all of 2 letters and 2 numbers long, plus the school and .edu.
I never had an hotmail account, but I have three in my contacts list.
All along I’ve been wondering what, according to the OP, makes something “legacy.” What’s wrong with an old email address that still works fine?
Seems like you doubters need Bitcoin Detox Cleanses to remove your Skin Tags Pain Free.
I have 2 Yahoo e-mail addresses. One is for personal use. The other is for business and governmnet use.
In my jobby-job’s parlance, “legacy” means 'old/hand-me-downs, but still serviceable." For example, the A-10 and F-16 are ‘legacy airframes’ that are in the active inventory after ~20-30 years, still working fine relatively speaking. I, personally, consider the ‘legacy’ line in the sand around 20 years. I reckon another word would be “vintage”.
Tripler
“It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage. . ." - Indiana Jones.
So are we having this discussion on a legacy message board?
I would say so, even though it got some new paint. AFAIK, it’s still the same guts.
I wouldn’t send this board in a head-to-head dogfight with an F-22 though.
Tripler
I don’t know the last time Cecil engaged with A-A missiles.
Assuming that the provider still has a good spam filter, and is continuing to upgrade their account safety protocols, I don’t think that there’s anything “wrong” with it at all. If it works, there’s no good reason to stop using it.
That said, a moment of googling tells me that there are indeed people (including, apparently, industry professionals) who look down on old-school email providers (particularly AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo), viewing people who (still) use those for their email as not keeping up with the times. I sometimes joke that my AOL address implies, “Yes, I Am Old.” That may not be a good reason to change, and it may not be a fair perception, but it is a thing.
Also, Hotmail, in particular, historically got a bad reputation because of some security issues, and weak spam filtering, but that was like twenty years ago.
I’ve been using email for 37 years and see no reason to change. Although I don’t think bitnet addresses still work. But as a prof. emeritus, use the mcgill.ca domain. I could change to gmail (what my phone wants to do), but having two addresses is too painful to contemplate. And I just can’t learnt to text with my big fat fingers.
I can shorten my @protonmail.com address to end in @pm.me and it’s very secure w/ encryption.
I was almost forty years old when I started surfing the web in 1999. I had deja, Remarq, AltaVista, Bolt, Hotmail, and AOL addresses, as well as Yahoo, which I now use for all e-mail purposes. When I finally got an Android phone a few years ago, I was given a Gmail account, but I never check it, and am only reminded of its existence when I receive a text notifying me some spammer has found me.
I have both hotmail and yahoo accounts for my username, as well as a first-initial-last-name at a more professional account from when I was still working. For whatever reason, my mom and siblings still contact me via the hotmail and yahoo accounts, but mostly, those are used when some annoying site requires an email for confirmation. My other account is used for more legitimate purposes - like places I order from frequently or serious correspondence with credit unions, etc.
My husband doesn’t understand why I do this, but then he complains about his email being flooded with spam and such. Go figure.
It’s not secure if everyone you mail to can read it, and if they can mail to you.
I briefly thought that by not using Gmail routinely i was giving Google a little less info about me. Then i realized that at least 90% of my personal email is sent to or comes from a Gmail account.
I am so sad that somewhere at the turn of the century/millenium I forgot my cs.com password when I bought a new computer, I would love to have kept it. My first e-mail address… 
Now AOL claims my old address does not even exist.
The quill pen on a tablet is cool, but the inkwell blots the screen.
Makes my paranoid me wonder if they do read the content after all, despite their assurances not to.
I’m going to say their spam filter is fallible. I’ve sent stuff to friends, and they’ve asked for the information, and when i assured them i sent an email, they found it in the “don’t need to look at these” folder. I think it’s because i use a .us domain.
But it’s sporadic, and this happens to people who get most of my email.
We have a lot of SDMB users who have yahoo addresses, which I know because yahoo has an annoying tendency to filter off our password reset emails and other important emails, making it very difficult for some people to access their SDMB account.