I bought a Gmail invite on eBay last week. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that rsteele(at)gmail(dot)com* was already taken. It is due to the popularity of the “rsteele” login that I am rsteele19(at)yahoo(dot)com, ryangarysteele(at)hotmail(dot)com and now, rgsteele(at)gmail(dot)com. And undoubtedly some poor sap is trying to sign up for Gmail right now, cursing “Someone took rgsteele!”
I do hold the coveted “rsteele” login in a few places, however. For example, I am rsteele(at)telus(dot)net. I was not the first, however. When I acquired the address way back in ’99, I signed in for the first time only to find the account full of email already. Stuff about medical conferences and cancer treatment methods. Turns out the account had recently been surrendered by its former owner, a doctor. I tracked down her new address and dutifully forwarded all messages intended for her as they trickled in over the following year.
Even though I no longer receive internet access from Telus, I have opted to retain my email address (and pay $5.30 a month for the privilege.) Why? Well, for one thing, I’ve been too lazy to change all my mailing list subscriptions and update all my accounts on various web sites that have this address on file. But more important than that, I’m afraid of someone else acquiring my old email address and reading mail that was intended for me.
Not that I receive much important mail at this address. Over 95% of the incoming mail is spam. Most of the remaining 5% is from mailing lists, with the occasional personal message. (Most of my personal communications on the Internet take place on instant messenger.) But there’s always a chance that someone could send an email to this address after someone else has taken it over, and that worries me. It’s kinda like moving out of your house and not being able to leave a forwarding address. And while the new tenant is probably an honest guy who wouldn’t ordinarily open someone else’s mail, everything is written on a postcard. He’s already started reading it before he realizes that it was not meant for him.
My email address in college was rsteele(at)uvic(dot)ca. I had to abandon that address after I graduated. I made an effort to update everyone with my new address, but it is likely I missed some people. Has the address been reassigned to someone else? Has someone else received an email that was meant for me? Why don’t email providers tell you how soon they will reassign an email address after you abandon it?
Am I being paranoid? Should I cancel my telus.net address? Am I asking too many rhetorical questions?
If there’s any lesson in this, I guess it’s to realize that there are some email addresses you can’t keep forever, and there are some that you don’t want to. And if you think you might not be keeping an address for long, you might want to make it one that someone else is unlikely to choose.
I’m optimistic that I will have my Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail addresses until I die. Feel free to email me at any of them.
* Email addresses in this post have been munged to thwart the nasty spammers.
Comments
3 responses to “On Internet Identity”
Those were the days.
I don’t think H ever paid her ambulance bill.
ryan my friend, it seems you have too much time, and money on your hands. why not give some of it to me? some of both time & money.
it was recently said to me that i am so busy that i need a personal assistant. since it seems you have so much time on my hands i nominate you…. nominations closed….. hey lookie there…. you are now my assistant.
as well, i must scream: OVER FIVE DOLLARS PER MONTH!!!?!!! you are right mad man, i feel a fever a brewing. i can help you. let’s get that money transfer to me happening and you will marvel at the speed of your recovery.
you may find interesting, that i have made two attempts at a personal, lifelong address. the first was a couple “canada.com” accounts that promised “free email for life” back before global owned that domain. i had “jarm”, and ‘jayarmstrong” and i was happy. unfortunatley those red bastards at global when taking over canada.com did not follow thru on the previous owners agreements. alas… they WERE free….. and now global charges a “nominal” fee of something like $10/yr. unfortunatley, i got my parents into this mess as well. and it saved them once. when most everyone else had to change emails from whatever@home.com, my parents stayed the course at canada.com.
now here’s the real way to do it. i’ve been doing it since 2001 and it is still going strong. INVEST in a DOMAIN name. they couldn’t be cheaper. some places in the states are as low as $5.99/yr. (much lower and THEY probably will steal your domain from you). some provide stealh web page redirecting, and email forwarding and aliasing. if not, mydomain.com provides those basic services for free…. and i had been using them for years.
recently i’ve upgraded. i’ve switched to anonymous domain registration (an extra $8/mo)…. which i figure is barely worth it right now… but will become more and more worth it as time goes on. it basically hides all the information that i used to register my domain… like addresses, phone numbers, etc.
i’ve also upgraded and will soon no longer need mydomain.com. see, i now have 10G of webspace, and unlimited bandwidth. of course i have those piddly unlimited email accounts and aliases as well. what does this cost? under $8/mo. is it more than i need? hell yes…
… but i will have my domains and my emails for essentially $10/yr.
“while the new tenant is probably an honest guy who wouldn’t ordinarily open someone else’s mail,”
Hah. That made me remember our mail opening parties, where randomly drunk, one of us would reach for the pile of other people’s mail and see how much they owed to whom.