Something in ATMB got me thinking which is always a dangerous thing. I have a friend who just changed e-mail services for the third time this year and here I sit with the same two basic accounts since 1996. In my life I have had maybe a total of 6 accounts; 4 have gone inactive or been closed.
What’s your oldest active account? Roughly how many have you had since getting on the internet?
My oldest is from 1998. Prior to that, I think I had an AOL account in about 1992 and perhaps one or two others.
I’ve had any number of Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail accounts, but the one I actually use is from my ISP and I’ve had it since I moved out of my parents’ house in 1997.
My oldest ever was in 1991 when I went to college. I had one AOL account in 1995 which I then dropped and went back on in 1996 and have had ever since. I also have another AOL screen name with my real name. Those are the only ones I consider having been my main accounts. So basically 4 over the past 21 years. My Dope address has been valid since 1996.
My basic one is from Netzero, which Wiki says launched in 1998. I would’ve swore my addy was older.
I do have a yahoo e-mail that I got very early, but only use for Fantasy Football. Wiki says Yahoo launched in 1994, went public in 1995, which matches when I first got into FF.
I had an Applelink account way back when (88? 89?), but I don’t remember how it worked.
I signed on with AOL very early (92? 93?), but that acct is long dead.
I have Hotmail and Gmail accts, too, for my business stuff. I had Juno, Compuserve, maybe something else too, but my Netzero acct is my most used oldest.
I just checked my oldest semi-active account (Yahoo - I say semi-active as I still use it to sign up for things but it has almost 22,000 unread mails and I abandoned it long ago). Apparently I signed up on July 26, 1999. Not as long ago as I thought, but long enough that my address is just firstnamelastname@yahoo.com.
My main email address is lastname@yahoo.com that I set up in 1994 or 1995.
Mine is in reference to a piece of computer equipment that I can (easily, without trying to hard) trace back to at least 1996. I’m sure it goes back a bit farther then that even. I’m guessing it’s at least as old as the SDMB, in any form.
Also, I assume we’re only counting active email address. That’s my oldest active one. As in, I use it on a daily basis.
I have a still-active Hotmail account from 1996. I’ve had to resurrect it several times and it has like 7,000 pieces of spam in the inbox, but it’s mine.
My basic home email address is one I’ve had since 1995.
Oh and I’ve probably had about 40 addresses since, both work and the latest webmail fad. Hotmail was my second one. Stuck with gmail since '04 though. Got out of the ISP = email trap early, something my sister and her husband still haven’t managed - they change email every time they change provider, which is a PitA.
I can still receive mail from my email address from 1992 (college), but I can no longer send mail from it.
My email address from 1996 is currently active and receives regular use. My circa 1994 hotmail account is still alive, but I only use it for when I have to signup for something minor and I don’t want to deal with the spam or give out my main address.
I still use my @kent.edu email address from college from 1997. It’s my main non-work address.
I forget what I was using before then. I know I didn’t come up with ZipperJJ until after college started and all my webmail addresses are that.
I have no idea how old my yahoo address is. Is there someplace in my account information where I can find out? I know it predates my joining up here.
I just searched for “welcome to yahoo” and went to the last page of the results. There was the original welcome email I got when I signed up. I assume, in my case, just going to the last page of my inbox would have worked too…
I love these questions.
My oldest address, which my wife uses now, is with AT&T which we got somewhere around 1993. I was working for AT&T so I signed up right away, and we got our not very uncommon last name with no numbers or other stuff.
As for other stuff, I don’t remember if I had a Multics email address when I was at MIT - if I did it would be 1969. I definitely had a PLATO email address which was 1974. And I’ve had plenty before domain addressing, when you had to email giving an explicit path to the destination machine.
Nice idea but I don’t keep any email that old.
My one and only email account I think I started in 94, or possibly 95, with yahoo.
My primary e-mail is from 1994.