The oldest active email address I have is a Yahoo! Mail address that I originally signed up for in November 1997. Yes, that means I have an email address that’s almost 16 years old. I don’t use it as my primary account anymore, but I login to it about once a month just to keep it active for the fun of it (gotta have nerdy bragging rights, after all).
A few years back I used to tell people that if they were getting spammed too much with their current email address to switch to a different address. I don’t tell people to do that anymore because of what an unbelievable pain in the ass it is to switch addresses these days; this is especially true given the fact your email address is for all intents and purposes your primary identity on the internet.
Actually, correction.. it’s not switching that’s the problem. It’s logging into every single account you use and spending hours switching all your crap over to the new address. And then of course you have to tell all your friends, family, co-workers and everyone else what new address you’re using, many of whom will totally ignore you and still email your old account for months before they get the hint.
Not fun. Not fun at all.
As annoying as it is, it’s sometimes better to stick with an old email address simply to avoid the monster hassle of getting everything switched over to it.
If you’re one of those people who still pays a monthly fee to a dial-up ISP you don’t even use just to keep a specific email address active, I will never berate you for that (unless you’re paying for AOL which does not require a paid subscription for the @aol.com address to remain active, in which case you’re just wasting money for literally no reason).
Email addresses We Almost Never See Anymore
A few types of addresses rarely seen are [email protected] (CompuServe, now owned by AOL), [email protected] (Prodigy internet service), [email protected] (NetScape internet service, also owned by AOL), [email protected] (remember when Excite was a big search engine?) and others.
RocketMail.com is actually an address that Yahoo! Mail brought back, but now Y! forces everyone (yet again) to get an @yahoo.com address if you wanted a new Y! Mail account.
MSN.com email addresses are still out there (which is Hotmail) and some still use those.
Other addresses I’ve personally not seen in years are addresses ending in juno.com or netzero.net, both of which were high-profile dial-up ISPs years ago.
Addresses I do still see are subdomain-by-area for Time Warner Roadrunner internet service. In my locale, it’s [email protected]. And yes, I still do receive emails from people using those old addresses.
How old is your email address?
Do you have an email address that’s over 10 years old, and do you still use it regularly? If so, is spam a problem from the address being so old?
Take a minute and post a comment below and let me know.
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30 thoughts on “How Old Is Your Email Address?”
My hotmail was jacked so many times that I now use it as a revenge address for people who misbehave. MS told me it cannot be shut down and it cannot be deleted.
the heirarchy. Some get checked multiple times daily and some monthly and yes it is a pain sometimes but with good filter systems on each it works out. The worst spam collectors are the emails associated with a small web page but rarely do they get past the filters. The most
reliable and spam free are the gmail accounts.
But I closed it just last year, so it probably does not count.
My next oldest account would be my yahoo.com and that is only because Yahoo bought and closed Everyone’s @geocities.com accounts.
6096 days or 16 years, 8 months, 10 days not counting today!
popped for AOL and had (and yes, they are still active, for some strange reason) 2 accounts
with them. I got AOL for the chat rooms, really. Juno and AOL were dialup’s. Then came
Yahoo. OMG, had I only been able to see the future. I also have 2 private emails, and the
all famous Gmail accounts. I loath Yahoo, but as pointed out, what a pain to undo years of
stuff. Just migrating one Gmail account to park on my computer took weeks. Yikes !!
I am, however, totally demented and run 22 “really used” accounts, daily. All serve a real
purpose and use, but it’s a overload at times.
Currently using (about 1994 signup) yahoo.com. little spam, as I also have 3 others that I give to whoever/whatever. my primary is ONLY for friends, and pure need business, like product registration, online purchasing, etc. (secure)
so, my current daily email addy is 19 years old.
& @excite.com, both about two decades old.
no spam problems with writemail or excite, both filter quite well, or are ignored by spammers?
“excite”, in free version, can’t be accessed with “POP” or”SMTP” , so requires web login, a serious nuisance,in this “Smartphone Sentury”
I still use an email client (att.net) but att is trying to force me to go to (web mail). They charge
for any tech svc associated with their email client service.
Keeping the same e-mail address is like keeping the same landline telephone no. -why change unless you have to?
We receive a lot of “spam” telephone calls in France and if I do not recognise the incoming caller number when the ‘phone rings then I just let them speak to the answering machine!
My original oldest email addresses would [email protected] and [email protected], both BBS addresses. bluemoon was a Unix BBS, and I ran my own my own Fidonet node.
My original ISP has disappeared into the morass of mergers that happened, even though I no longer use it.
My second oldest is my address with my first domain, both just over 10 years again, bytehead(at)bytehead.org
I got my Gmail address in 2004, one of the first to get one. I could have sold my invites back then.
I also acquired a Gmail address in ’04 back when the 1GB of space was a big deal. Eventually closed the account because I just had no use for it.
The second oldest address I have is from Hotmail, registered in 1998. You used to be able to acquire registration date info from account.live.com for Hotmail accounts but you can’t anymore for some reason. I only remember the reg year because I checked it a few years back.
i get very little spam say 10 a week out of about 600 emails.
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