Ask HN: Your very first e-mail address. When did you get it and why?

9 points | by ryancodes 1921 days ago

17 comments

  • paulrpotts 1921 days ago
    My very first address was a BITNET address. This is pre-Internet: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET and my address, which I don't recall, was specified with a "bang" address: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Bang_path.

    I would have gotten this around 1986 while at the College of Wooster. Honestly, I don't think I used that address very often for e-mail. At least, I don't recall using it much, although the details are a little hazy in my memory now. I don't have an archive of anything I sent and received back then. My earliest archived e-mail messages start around the fall of 1990, when I got an account on the University of Michigan's mainframe, and I think that account used the modern scheme for Internet e-mail addresses.

    • ryancodes 1921 days ago
      Wow, I hadn't heard about any of this before now... that's awesome.
  • Mister_X 1921 days ago
    Hmm, I've only had two email addy's over the last 30+ years, pretty sure the first one was 1986 or '87 when I opened an account at portal.net, in Cupertino, not too many private isp's back then.

    I got it to keep up with my fellow caver friends and join the cavers mailing list, a private list for NSS members who were actively exploring caves all over the world.

    For my "computer", I couldn't see spending 3 to 4 k on a laptop, so I dropped $350 on a Brother Power Note and an rs232 modem, together they did everything I needed and wowed all my friends when I printed out a cave plot in the middle of the Mojave Desert on my tiny battery powered B&W printer.

    I used my first Password in 1977 at work (private telco interconnect in silicon valley), it was DEVO, yes, I was referred to as the company's resident punk rocker service technician.

  • muzani 1921 days ago
    Hotmail. I was about 8 years old I think. My mom wouldn't let me use my real name, so it was (partial real name) + elvis@hotmail.com

    Later on I made games and my dad said the name looked trollish. So I switched my main email to (real name)@gmail.com

  • DrScump 1921 days ago
    My first wasn't accessible from public Internet (defense contractor).

    My second started in 1986, well before we had domain addressing, so a sender had to know 1) our corporate hostname, 2) my username, and 3) a well-known host to route through (like uunet, pyramid, decwrl, etc.)

    The convention for publishing my address, therefore, was

      {pyramid|uunet|decwrl}!infmx!aland
    
    I was actually the first person in the company to put my email address on my business cards! I still have some from then.
  • mindcrime 1921 days ago
    Hrrm... I think maybe it was my email when I was at UNC-W back in the 90's. I don't remember what it was now though. Maybe something like prhodes@sol.cms.uncwil.edu or something like that.

    My first personal email though, was mindcrime@nccoast.net. This would have been about 1996 or 1997 or so.

    Some things never change, huh?

  • beezischillin 1921 days ago
    2003, I was about 10 years old, I didn't speak any English and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever to have my own e-mail address so I somehow registered for a Yahoo account. I still have it.
  • 51lver 1921 days ago
    1996, dad set up firstname@ email addresses for us on his new mail server. By 1999 I had to move to a new one (not firstname@ this time, but a unique name) due to spam.
  • dronescanfly 1921 days ago
    mr-hankey@provider.com

    mr hankey as the title of some southpark episode.

    Didn't want to give out my real name back then. Won't give my name to any mail provider today.

    pseudonyms forever :|

  • esseeayen 1921 days ago
    First email was at a now defunct ISP called AsiaOnline, and was a combination of mine an my father's name (as he bought the modem haha)
  • bitxbitxbitcoin 1921 days ago
    Comcast - don't even remember the handle. It was provided when my family set up internet through them in the 2000s.
  • fatnoah 1921 days ago
    College in 1993 and then an address at my own domain, which I still use as my primary address, in 1997.
  • icedchai 1921 days ago
    1992: it was a local ISP. In 1993, I got a UUCP feed to my BBS, including email and Usenet news.
  • 4ensic 1921 days ago
    Pxxxx@ix.netcom.com About 1992, it came with the dialup Netcruiser Internet service.
  • chelmzy 1921 days ago
    Hotmail to use MSN Messenger in the fourth grade. Circa 2004/2005.
  • vkaku 1919 days ago
    My first email address was a Yahoo! address in 1997.
  • JohnClark1337 1919 days ago
    It was on Juno because that's what we used back then. The internet was a much different place.