I suppose that'd be my Amazon account (mid to end nineties). Other than that, my Microsoft account, which used to be my Skype account from 2003 (IIRC).
Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
51–60 of 145 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#52My gmail account turns 20 this year. Ebay says I joined in 2001. The winner, so far, is Amazon; my first order was in 2000.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#53ICQ - 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. :|
To this day, I still remember my ICQ number from back in the nineties. However, unfortunately the same doesn't apply to the password and I can't seem to be able to reset it.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#54Not sure which is it, but supposing it's a 20+ year old account, it is very likely that: - the site has been hacked probably dozens of time since I created the account, and my credentials are sold for peanuts these days. - the password I used wasn't very strong at all, and it has been cracked and shared in plain text for years - the original domain now probably is in hands of some domain parking bullshit company, sel…
I've created hundreds of accounts since the mid-1990s. The only two accounts I can think that fall under your description are MySpace and LinkedIn (the latter I joined shortly after it started, and I suppose my MySpace login still works but I haven't tried it in years).
I made a rare (for me) mistake early on, using the same password for Facebook that I was already using on MySpace. Fortunately, I did not use the same email address, so that password was of limited use to anyone else. These passwords have since been changed, of course.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#55ICQ - 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. :|
To this day, I still remember my ICQ number from back in the nineties. However, unfortunately the same doesn't apply to the password and I can't seem to be able to reset it.
I still know my password. :)
I did have someone try to take it over about a decade ago, but the email it was linked to was still active, so GL!
Apparently, a 6digit address is worth about $50 on Ebay, or was the last time I checked.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#56My self-hosted web and email goes back to 1997... still in use. (vsta.org)
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#57It is going to be close between my gmail (I was invited during the beta in 2004) and my bank which would have been 2002/2003 timeframe but I can’t remember for sure. I can remember earlier accounts like deadjournal, Hotmail, something awful, but I don’t use those anymore.
I'd forgotten about gmail being in beta like that — hardly surprising, of course! My welcome email confirmed it; it begins "First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail." Dated June 2004.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#58It is or used to be the case that as part of account recovery Google would ask you when you created your account as a sort of security question that applies to everyone, so I'd suggest discretion when you think about making such information public.
I really hope they've stopped doing that. Now that so many of the answers are going to be "about 20 years ago", no legitimate users are going to remember these specifics!
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#59I've had my Amazon account since '98 or so. I still have items on my wishlist from the 90s. Think of all the database upgrades over the years to move that data forward...
I created an Amazon account when Amazon was pretty new and just sold books. Ordered a few books and then forgot about it. A couple of years later, when Amazon got popular I tried to login again and it did not work, so I wrote them an e-mail and they said it had been deactivated because of inactivity but now they had restored it. Different times.
When Amazon got really big and dabbled in the ad business I deleted it, so I don't have it anymore. Only created a new one when the pandemic hit.
Re: Ask HN: What are your oldest "online" accounts still in use?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
To this day, I still remember my ICQ number from back in the nineties. However, unfortunately the same doesn't apply to the password and I can't seem to be able to reset it.
I still know my password. :) I did have someone try to take it over about a decade ago, but the email it was linked to was still active, so GL! Apparently, a 6digit address is worth about $50 on Ebay, or was the last time I checked.
> I did have someone try to take it over about a decade ago
I either didn't have mine linked to a recovery email or lost access to that email account. Tried to get back into the account somewhere in the aughts but no longer knew the password, and thus was out of luck. But then I discovered some years later that someone else had taken it over, as it was associated with some Russian thing. Oh well.