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Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

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121–130 of 145 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#121

ICQ - 6 digit address. It's 30+ years old at this point. I still use it once in awhile. Sadly, my Compu-Serve account no longer works. :|

What do you use ICQ for? I stopped using it when it became pretty much just a dating service.

I have a few friends from back in ICQs heyday that still use it. It's kind of a running joke. One of us will fire up a client and login, then email the others asking, "where in the hell is everyone" and we'll use it for a week, then it fades again, until a few years later, someone fires up a client, and emails the others asking, "where in the hell is everyone"... ;)

I also like keeping ancient accounts. I've been on some form of the internet since 300bps modems, so I have a number of ancient accounts that I'll pile up, and when I die, they'll be given to my partner, so they can hang on to them, until they pass. Some day, 371 years down the road, a small child will hold a sheet of paper with these accounts on them and wonder what in the hell was wrong with people 400 years prior. lol

edit: That compuserve line wasn't a joke. I still know my username/password from those days.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#122
post #90

I've still got an ICQ number that works, though I've not used it (prior to today) in at least a decade, probably two. Eight-digit starting with 1, so probably 1997-1998?

Mine's a seven-digit, starting with 5. I have no idea what that dates it to.

Seven-digit starting with 5 would be at least fall of 97.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#124
post #40

Still have my college email address. But none of the clients can login until I physically go in and reset the password at helpdesk, 4HELP. I actively use the eBay account I created in 1998. And my Slashdot burner account has become my main account because my primary account is tied to my old ISP email address. Learned to never do that again.

If we count email, I still use an address from my employer that was established on my first day in 1997. I lost my college accounts around then, though a student group one lasted longer than official ones. Since email was also used with USENET, I didn't have any other online, public-at-large accounts until instant messaging invaded work a few years later. So I think I had AOL (AIM) and Microsoft (MSN) first, but haven't kept them active.

Close in there would be online commerce. I don't have detailed records, but probably started using Dell and Amazon quite early in the original dot-com era. Probably also B&H Photo Video and Crutchfield, since these were businesses I already knew from the mail-based catalog era.

I think I also had an online account with my bank by around the same time I started my job, though it took me a couple more years to wean myself off writing paper checks and primarily using bill pay.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#127
i’d say my actual oldest is an AOL account whose creation date is sometime in 1990.

but if you count data migration errors setting creation dates back to unix timestamp 0, then my RocketMail account takes the cake! apparently every RM account had its creation date set to 0, according to others i’ve spoken to about the issue.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#128
I don't think I have anything 90s that still works. I remember ordering from Amazon in 1999 or earlier but my current account has my first order from early 2002, so I must have recreated the account for some reason. Ebay is about the same time, 01/02. My Yahoo email is probably 2001. AIM would have been 98/99 but they killed it. ICQ would have been earlier but I haven't logged into it since 2000-01 probably, if it still exists I wouldn't know the password. Actually Slashdot would have been 98 I think? (six digit UID starting with 100xxx; I'd have gotten 5 digits if I'd created the account a week or so earlier :P), but I went through and did the "delete my account" request there maybe six months ago.

Can't think of anything else that would still be around from before about 2001.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine's a seven-digit, starting with 5. I have no idea what that dates it to.

Mine is 6 digits, starting with 3. I'm pretty sure that it was 1996 when I signed up.

I had a 6 digit one... some person used my computer and deleted the account long ago though.

Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?

#130
post #6

My Microsoft login is still a Hotmail account, and I still use my same eBay account from way back then too. There's also a forum I've been a part of since I was a kid, and I'm nearly 40 now. My favorite account I used to have was username@ibm.net, back when they dabbled in consumer ISPs (unlimited dialup!). Sadly, they discontinued that service after a while. I used to have really old Steam, Amazon, Slashdot, Faceboo…

> There's also a forum I've been a part of since I was a kid, and I'm nearly 40 now.

Which forum?

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