4mo ago

What is the OLDEST online account that you currently still own and still use somewhat frequently?

173 comments

I bought a gmail invite from a message board. If this sequence of words makes sense to you, you're old too.
- I got an invite to Gmail when I was in university. Sadly I was at inbox zero for quite some time so I don’t have the Welcome to Gmail email anymore. It’s more than likely my oldest active account. I do have a Neowin account that still works from 2002 but I don’t frequent anymore. Macrumors is my most active old forum account, that’s from 2005. I had an ancient AIM and ICQ account but there’s no way I could remember the account details.
  
  Ditto for the AIM and ICQ.
  I think I read recently that ICQ was shutting down.
  
  I mean you could always make a new account to get the welcome email and photoshop the dates and times to make it look like it's older. I imagine the look of the email now is different from 2003, tho.
- :-(
- TIL G-Mail was invite only back then. I am too GenZ to undersand this shit.
  
  A pattern they repeated with Google Wave and Google+, neither of which took off, partly because there weren't enough people using them.
  I genuinely thought G+ could have been a FB killer, if they hadn't made it hard to join.
- Ditto - oldest email I still have in archive is from Nov. 2006 so at least that old
- Mine was from a chain of random people posting their invite links on Slashdot. It feels like ancient history now.
  
  I still have a Slashdot account from 2009. Haven't been on there much in years though. Google would probably be my oldest actively used account as I still use the one I set up with the initital invite.
- Shiiit, actually that does make sense. I remember when Gmail gave you 10 invites for new accounts and you didn't even get them right away. You had to earn them over time. So yeah, invites were regularly sold on the message boards I used to frequent.

My Hotmail account, which I've had since high school. Oldest email in there is from 2002, but I think I opened it up in 2000.
- same, but yahoo.
  
  All my friends and I used to have Yahoo! email addresses. But for some reason around 2010 almost everyone’s accounts seemed to be getting compromised and sending weird messages around to their contacts… and now I don’t know anyone with a Yahoo!
  I never figured out what was going on and why Yahoo in particular seemed so affected by it.
- Same, but my original Hotmail account is long lost. I still have the one I made around 2000 though.
  RIP suckitdown@hotmail
- Same. I use mine to log into things that require an email so they can spam you.
- Same here, made one in 1999, the MSN messenger days were wild.

Probably my 2004 Gmail account, but that’s pushing the definition of “still use somewhat frequently”. I do still have my email forwarded to my current address, but most senders have been updated with my current address.
I lost control of my Hotmail, AIM, ICQ accounts years ago.
- I still have my ICQ. That's one number burned into my brain.
  
  Didn’t ICQ recently shut the service down? Thought I saw a headline along those lines recently.
  
  Uh-oh! Mine was long forgotten.
  
  I think my AIM account is still technically active even though they shut it down. Don't know what they did with all the accounts.

Usenet account from 1987. And no, I'm not going to post what it is.
- X-No-Archive: yes
- What's "on" there? What can it be compared to at this time?
  
  Usenet was the golden age of Reddit for its time. Before the binary newsgroups drowned everything out and web 1.0 captured everyone's attention.
  In a way, it was a lot like Lemmy. Federated servers all inter-exchanged posts to a giant, global message board of newsgroups (roughly analogous to a subreddit or Lemmy community). Anyone could create a newsgroup and there were a lot of them.
  When it was good, it fostered the same kind of genuine conversation that Reddit and Lemmy do when they're at their best. It was full of memes, too, although that word didn't exist then.
  
  Usenet? Most new media can be found there. The most copyright-contentious files are not on there for long so most folks use automated downloaders.

My original Gmail account. I've had it since Gmail was in closed beta.
My Steam account is older though. Fucking thing is old enough to drink now (2003; from when I first had to use it for Counter-Strike when they took down the WON servers).
Any other 21 year old Steam accounts wanna play some Ragdoll Kung-Fu?
- Damn, I have almost the exact same answer. Switched to Steam once WON got taken down (held out as long as I could), and had a friend send me a Gmail invite a few months later.
  Only differences are that I mostly used mine for TFC, and my account won't technically hit drinking age until early next month.
  I kinda wish I could say I had like a bottle of liquor I've been saving for the occasion, but the idea of a "21-year-old Steam account" genuinely never occurred to me until one day I woke up and realized it was about to turn 18. Made me realize how fast shit moves, and this is just driving the point home..
- Xiao xiao?!?
- Oh man I've not dusted off ragdoll Kung Fu in a very long time
- .... are you me? What this guy said is also my answer.

I've got a 20 year old Gmail account that I use when I need to sign up for something.

A four letter .com domain name I registered in 2003. Supposedly worth $5000-6000 presently.
Or my eBay account I’ve had since 2001.
- A word in the dictionary?
- fuck.com?
  (Don't click that)
  
  Pretty sure that’d be worth much, much more than mine :)

Steam account. Made in 2007, back then i used for a random game i bought having a cd key; but I still use it frequently.
- Next month my steam account will be 21.
  Created it shortly after steam launch.
  I had to wait over night in a download queue to download the stream client bundled with cs 1.6 (which then also took a couple hours)
- I had steam before I had an email (with my father's email). I was half the age I am now

I've had my Hotmail amount for like 25 years
- Same. Got in early, and it's just my first and last name. I use it now as a bin for accounts for websites i dont want in my main inbox.
  I also have an aol email address from around the same time that im scared to open.
  Who knows what's in there.
- How much is too much Hotmail?
- Hotmail was one of my very first email accounts but I believe Microshaft had already bought it by the time I signed up. I think I was about 12 or 13.

A hotmail account from before microsoft bought it
- Yep. Same. I can’t think of anything older that is still operating.

My AOL email. I didn't actually make it, my Dad did and I was so young I literally don't remember a time without it. I still check it despite migrating most of my accounts away.

I have a Yahoo email account from the mid-late 90's...
- Same. It would have been 1997 or later.
  
  Mine's about the same age, 97 or 98. Log into it very infrequently but it still works.
  Everything else I recall having an account on from the late 90s no longer exists.

I joined a forum about 30 years ago, and I am still a regular. I can't say the exact date I joined, nor can the forum admins, as things like that were not tracked back then. Even them having my email was a way later add-on.

probably neopets, can't let them starve.
- My Neopets account got wiped shortly before they said they'd stop wiping accounts. I'd lost the password and recovery email ages ago though.

ebay. 1998
- Same, but it isn't my oldest.

Youtube. It's roughly 20 years old.
- Probably slightly less, Youtube came out publicly in 2005. But good call, that might be mine too. Or the Hotmail account I used back then.
- I can't access the YT account I opened in 2006, despite knowing the password, because i changed my phone number

Possibly my Hotmail, although I'm not 100% sure when I opened it, and I converted it to an Outlook email when that became an option.
Most of the sites I used to use have shut down or migrated to new systems, so my oldest account is most likely my ModTheSims account opened in 2008. I do still use it whenever I'm in the mood for some Sims 2 retail therapy.

My hotmail account.
Signed up for it in the closed beta way before Microsoft bought it, was fucking pissed when they did.
It's my 2fa for most of my games and the emergency email for my other emails.

Hotmail. 1997.

That still gets used? Probably my eBay account from 2000/2001. First thing I bought from there was a 33.6k external modem lol.
Edit: No, I take that back. I have an even older account on a MUD server from like 1996. It doesn't get used regularly, but I do log in every 6-7 months, randomly, and go on a few runs.
- Same. Been using my ebay account since early 1999, literally a quarter of a century. I don't remember if it was the very first, but I know one of my early purchases was a parallel port to ethernet adapter, so I could take my already aging 486SLC/33 laptop to campus and get it on the internet using the Arachne browser. The SLC was basically a 386 on steroids, and it couldn't handle both Windows and Interwebs. I paid for the first few items by mailing off a money order.
- Hell yeah. What MUD?
  
  Avatar
- I went through the same path. Gmail came to mind first, then eBay, then a MUD I haven't actually played in ages but double check that my account is there now and then.

Hotmail from 1996

Nice try, Narc

Nothing really, I try to switch account and delete old ones every now and again. My oldest account is my bank account.

The oldest email in my Gmail account is from March of 2006, but I used to delete regularly so the account is probably a couple years older than that.

I opened my first Gmail account during the private beta (2004). It's not my daily driver account, but I still use it for government stuff like taxes and healthcare. It kinda blows my mind that it's 20 years old.
- Same, it just hit me that it's been 20 years

Gmail since 2002 or something. Steam account if emails don't count.
Edit: Wow account could be older than steam account. I honestly can't remember.
Edit2: Yep, wow account is a 4 years older than my steam. Turns out I lost my first steam account that did not really have any games on it and instead of recovering it I just registered a new one. Doing this research of my own history was a questionable use of my evening but apparently necessary to get it out of my head.
- My steam account might be older than my current email, come to think of it.

I own a 6 digit steam id (500k).
I ain't much but it's honest work.

Livejournal, 1999. I think I win.
- If you're still using live journal in 2024, you should win SOMETHING.
  
  It was the best social media ever. I still have the same friends 25 years later.

I have an undernet from 94-95. If you don't know what that is...

Yahoo mail. Although I did literally just delete it off my phone because it was complaining that I didn't check my SPAM messages frequently enough.

Apple iTools @mac email address from 2000, eBay since some time in 98, but they don't show records that far back.
- Ebay will (or used to) tell you when your account started. July 97 for me. I remember when i could skim through all of the auctions, on my lunchbreak.
  
  Ebay still shows your start date on your feedback page. Mine dates back to December 1999 and I believe that makes it my oldest still active online account.

Former Hotmail, currently Outlook account. Since 2001

YouTube account, since 2009.

I made my email account 28 years ago, and still use it daily.

My Google accounts have been around for a couple of decades now, my Microsoft account about the same amount of time.
Though actually I think the Xbox live part of my account predates the rest of it—iirc they weren't originally linked.
My steam account is about the same age too come to think of it, I remember getting it before hl2 was released
eBay and Amazon are older too actually, maybe made those back in 2002/2003
Does my online banking count? I've potentially had that even longer

Probably my yahoo mail account. I've mostly transitioned off it, but a few things still come to it and it predates even my gmail account (which I barely ever use either). Apple ID's Hide My Email ability has basically rendered all the other ones pointless though since I can just generate a new fake email address whenever I want to register for something fishy. I wish phone numbers worked the same way.

eBay is my oldest, not sure when exactly, 2001-2002-2003 something like that.
Next is my Something Awful forums account from 2005.

My gmail address with my exact full name I registered about 18 years ago by invite only.

I got my Gmail in 2005, and still heavily use it.
I want to run my own email, but I have soo much tied to it that I'm having trouble knowing where to start...

I guess technically that'd be the email account at my employer where I started some decades ago. Before Google and their Gmail was a thing, anyway. Or, livejournal, I guess. ...MySpace... Oof, AOL... Usenet, maybe...
Gah. I'm old.

My Steam and RuneScape accounts are both over 20 years old, and I still use both regularly. Hell, RuneScape is even available via Steam.
As far as the actual oldest account, I think I have an old Yahoo! Mail account from like… Late 1997? Early 1998? Back when AOL was still sending out free demo discs in the mail.

Email from 2001

I guess technically my KOL. account.
Here's a question for everyone who's old enough, what is KOL and what happens to it when you turn a certain age? I've yet to meet or hear of anyone knowing this answer.

Steam Acc from 2005 and YouTube from 2006

Wikipedia user account from 2002.

Apparently there are dozens of us still using Hotmail. 24 years strong!
- Hotmail is what I use to sign up to things that I don't want to get emails from

Yahoo. It was from 07

AOL, 2001
- Yeah aol for sure though I certainly don’t frequently use it. But I do access it every year or two. That was probably around 2001 as well but I’d need to think about it