Over a decade of my Hotmail

 Posted by Grant Hamilton on 22 January 2010  Vintage/Retro
Jan 222010
 

That’s the email that I got in my Hotmail account this morning. Wow, a decade-plus of that email address? I had to check it out.

It took a bit of finagling, but if you have a Hotmail address, from your inbox, go to the very bottom-right of the page. There should be a place to click on “Account” or “Feedback.” Click on “Account.” You may have to enter your password again.

You’ll be taken to a page that shows some of your basic info — but also includes the date you registered for your email address. Turns out that I’ve been logging in to gramiq@hotmail.com since September 19, 1998.

I actually remember having a Hotmail account prior to that, but it was getting spammy, so this was my second one. At the time, I also had a Brandon University email address — I think it was hamilga@brandonu.ca — and the Hotmail one was kind of a novelty. Weird that I still use it as a semi-permanent email address.

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried to migrate to a Gmail account, but I get so much legacy stuff (bank statements, mailing lists, long-lost friends) that it’s just not practical. Adding to that, I’ve got so many other websites where I use “gramiq@hotmail.com” as a login ID. My switching cost is too high. Even my grant@absurdintellectual.com email address redirects there.

Sigh. Over a decade of the same email address.

The Internet is old.

Grant Hamilton

  4 Responses to “Over a decade of my Hotmail”

  1. Oddly, though I signed up in 1997, my history says I signed up in the Fall of 1998 as well. ?!?!

    • You know — I could have sworn that I signed up before it was bought by Microsoft, but I guess I trusted their dates. Maybe they “rebooted” the signup dates after Microsoft bought them?

  2. Maybe they “rebooted” the signup dates after Microsoft bought them?

    That’s what I’m thinking. I’m pretty sure I had a very early hotmail address, but user name and password are long forgotten.

  3. When I got my hotmail I thought you had to pick a nickname rather than just use your name…juelebean…hee hee hee.

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