Old Email accounts

edrushuk

Hello all,


I have been thinking about my old email account that I would have registered before the year 2000.


Is there anyway of finding if any exists? I know I had ones for work which I would not be able to access but anything different from Yahoo & Google.


Thank you

fewgroats

Email the address and if you get a reply it exists!

In other words, if you stop using an email address it stops functioning as one.

edrushuk

Ok well it would have stopped working. Just thinking of ways to find some bank details that are older than 2000.


Thank you for your help

john539

edrushuk wrote: »

Hello all,


I have been thinking about my old email account that I would have registered before the year 2000.


Is there anyway of finding if any exists? I know I had ones for work which I would not be able to access but anything different from Yahoo & Google.


Thank you

Trying logging into email account online.

Try Forgot Password option if you setup recovery option.

Neil_Jones

As a general rule around that time if you created a free email account (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) and then didn't log into them for 90 days, they would be deleted. More recently this appears to have been changed as far as Hotmail/Outlook.com is concerned and its now around 270 days before it falls inactive and 360 days before it gets deleted. A Yahoo account will last for a year before it gets purged if you don't log in. ISP emails typically last as long as you're paying them money and usually vanish when you change provider.

TL;DR: if you had an account in 2000 and you haven't logged into it since then, a free email account is pretty much guaranteed its long gone and may be in use by somebody else by now. ISP email addresses remain active as long as you're a customer of theirs.

J_B

Neil_Jones wrote: »

ISP emails typically last as long as you're paying them money and usually vanish when you change provider.

Bizarrely, I stopped paying onetel in about 2005 (?)
My two email addresses with them still work now!

Neil_Jones

Hence use of "usually", though there are often exceptions to the rule with ISP email addresses, perhaps more so with older accounts. Dare say you could pay a provider to keep the email address, BT at least often allowed you to do this and maybe Sky too.

Onetel, the original Australian company, went into administration in 2001 but the UK arm was salvaged by Centrica and was later flogged to the Carphone Warehouse who eventually discontinued the brand in favour of TalkTalk making it effectively a legacy account. Experience dictates legacy accounts tend not to hang around forever, such as all those old Freeserve and Orange email addresses that EE is or has discontinued.

Google appears to be an exception to the rule, its already documented they don't delete old YouTube accounts/channels that you haven't logged into for ages and Gmail may be the same as well.

[Deleted User]

I had an old @o2.co.uk email account dating back to 2000 (originally @genie.co.uk) from before they even did landline and home broadband. It was still working up until early last year when O2 eventually pulled the plug on the last remaining accounts.