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

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

#41

Post by jghn »

thetimbanks wrote: post #25

I also have an eBay account that I still use from 1999. The other one that people seem to be impressed with is my Netflix account is from 2003. I was ordering DVDs in college and it blew people's minds that I was renting DVDs through the mail at that time. I tried to buy their stock back when they tried splitting the company into two entities. I think the stock was like $5 at the time. Unfortunately it was a lot hard…

I wouldn't have thought about Netflix as the service is so fundamentally different today than it was back then. I first signed up in 2003.

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

#43

Post by tgv »

eastern wrote: post #20

My Yahoo mail account was created as a Rocketmail account, likely in 1996 or 97, when Rocketmail launched and became the biggest Hotmail rival. Yahoo acquired it and it became Yahoo mail. So 27 or 28 years

I suppose it's Yahoo for me too. I thought it was a few years older than that, but it can't be, as it was launched in '97, indeed.

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

#44

Post by readingnews »

Define "online"?

Sure, I have that ebay account that I created when ebay started in 1995, but if we just say "any online service", well, I have run my own e-mail server since 1994, so I guess that predates it. I do not even want to admit this, but my Yahoo account is still valid, I see emails from 1994 also.

If we go with email, I was a sysadmin at a university, and at least two professors in our department had emails from the 1980s. Their account was the same, and still worked, of course, does that count?

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

#45

Post by ylee »

My `pobox.com` account was created in the mid-1990s. Active the whole time.

My college email addresses were created three decades ago and are active today. I could switch back to using one as my primary email address everywhere, and do use it in some places, but the pobox address became the primary one after graduation, before the college address was reenabled.

My Amazon account was also created in the mid-1990s. I applaud the company for making complete purchase histories still available.

I am not sure when my `yahoo.com` account was created but it was in the late 1990s. I have never ever used the address anywhere. It gets lots of spam.

My eBay account was created in the late 1990s. Active the whole time.

I have a low single-digit Slashdot account.

I also have a valid ICQ account from the 1990s, I think, but never used it.

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

#46

Post by beardyw »

tmaly wrote: post #24
eastern wrote: post #20

My Yahoo mail account was created as a Rocketmail account, likely in 1996 or 97, when Rocketmail launched and became the biggest Hotmail rival. Yahoo acquired it and it became Yahoo mail. So 27 or 28 years

Same, came here to say yahoo mail

Me too. I now use it for "I don't care" accounts so it is literally full of spam.

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

#48

Post by compsciphd »

yardie wrote: 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.

> 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.

4 digit account #s forever :) (in practice, hadn't logged in for forever till now).

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

#50

Post by voidfunc »

I was sifting through old email recently and rediscovered my neopets account from early 2000s. I had to contact then to unlock it as it had been soft deactivated in the interim but they were friendly about it and I answered some questions and got access.

There's not much going on with neopets if you're curious.. it's basically a zombie IP at this point in terms of features / game play.

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