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 user@cs.com (CompuServe, now owned by AOL), user@prodigy.com (Prodigy internet service), user@netscape.net (NetScape internet service, also owned by AOL), user@excite.com (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 user@tampabay.rr.com. 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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