I use a few old Yahoo mail accounts for online purchases. I check them infrequently, but when I do I’m always amused to see messages related to purchases I made nearly 20 years ago.
In 2000 I purchased some science equipment and every week or so there is a message from that company trying to entice me into spending more money. 16 years ago I bought a Mothers’ Day present from an obscure (to me) food store. And every time I log in, there’s another message wondering why I haven’t ordered any artisanal cheese lately.
I could probably unsubscribe, but I feel like any interaction at this point would be leading them on. It’s over between us.
I’m not sure. I generally unsubscribe from spam emails and put them on my kill list for good measure so I don’t get a lot of legacy spam.
I signed up at least six years ago for a research service that I haven’t used since. I don’t think I received any emails from them in the intervening time but this week, they sent me a very earnest message saying they would unfortunately have to disable my account due to European privacy rules unless I logged onto the service. They were so nice about it and having the account is so unobtrusive, I signed back up.
I had an old iwon.com address that I used for spam. Totally forgot about it until about a year ago when I was cleaning out my pseudo-spam email box (for companies where I may want to see their promotional emails, but usually not.) I never actually cancelled it, but iwon.com closed down. Kinda wish I could see what was sitting in that email from a decade or two ago…
The oldest individual email that’s spam that I haven’t thrown into the trash and therefore still have?
That’s how I parse the question that you asked but the examples you gave seem to be “a recurrent commercial email that you started getting dating back to some old purchase you once made”.
I’ve might have some 1991-vintage spam emails… have to go look
I meant spam that you’re still getting. That science company still sends me messages because of a single purchase I made a long time ago. When I check the Yahoo account they seem to send at least one a month to this day.
I actually printed the first piece of spam I ever got and had it on my wall until a couple years back; porn of course and around 1995 or something about 4 days after I got my first e-mail account with AOL.
Oh ------ well in that case its a cheap ammunition website I purchased from back around 2004 unless you want to count Classmates which I tried in say 1996 and still get a lot of notices from/about.
Could be worse, you could still be getting email from a dealer you never bought a car from! I have been getting email for years due to someone putting my address down when they bought a car.