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

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Common “oldest account” types

  • Webmail dominates: Hotmail, Yahoo/Rocketmail, AOL, and early Gmail (beta 2004) are frequent oldest accounts, sometimes still primary, sometimes spam sinks.
  • Commerce and finance: Many mention long-lived Amazon (mid‑ to late‑90s) and eBay (late‑90s/early‑00s) accounts, along with early online banking and brokerages (E*Trade, etc.).
  • Forums and communities: Slashdot (including very low user IDs), Ars Technica, Something Awful, Metafilter, GameFAQs, car and game forums, university clubs, and niche boards going back to late‑90s/early‑00s.
  • Games and virtual worlds: Old accounts for MUDs/MUSHes, Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Neopets, and Steam (early 2000s).
  • Messaging and identity: ICQ (often 6–8 digit UINs), AIM, MSN/Skype, Xbox Live, and long‑held personal domains or email forwarding services (e.g., pobox).

Nostalgia and personal history

  • Many recall dial‑up days, early ISPs, internet cafés, and first experiences moving from small towns to “big city” internet access.
  • Several note specific early purchases (books, VHS tapes, test prep) and how wild online DVD rentals or textbook ordering felt.
  • Some reminisce about long-running in‑jokes, ghost‑town MUDs, or coming‑of‑age usernames that are still in use decades later.

Security, survivorship, and data

  • Concern that very old accounts likely suffered breaches, used weak passwords, or share credentials with other sites.
  • Some recount learning not to use ISP emails for logins, and not to reuse passwords across platforms (e.g., MySpace → Facebook).
  • People highlight that providers sometimes silently purge or deactivate inactive accounts and email history.
  • There’s mild alarm about services (e.g., Google) historically using “account creation date” as a recovery factor, now hard to remember.

Longevity of services & definitions

  • Many reflect on how rare it is for services to survive multiple decades, through acquisitions, rebrands, or business pivots.
  • Debate on what “counts” as an online account: personal email servers, university logins from the 80s/90s, or phone numbers.
  • Some pride in keeping accounts alive (including for posterity), others deliberately deleted early social or big‑tech accounts.