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

Hacker News Discussion ↗

People are comparing their oldest still-active online accounts, from mid-1990s email addresses, forum logins, and ICQ numbers to early Amazon, eBay, banking, and game accounts. Their stories highlight how long digital identities and data can persist across decades, raising both nostalgia and concerns about security, forgotten credentials, and dependence on aging infrastructure and email providers.

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.