Ask HN: Your very first e-mail address. When did you get it and why? - ryancodes
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paulrpotts
My very first address was a BITNET address. This is pre-Internet: see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET](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](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
Wow, I hadn't heard about any of this before now... that's awesome.

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Mister_X
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.

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muzani
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

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DrScump
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.

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mindcrime
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?

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beezischillin
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.

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51lver
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.

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dronescanfly
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 :|

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esseeayen
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)

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Comcast - don't even remember the handle. It was provided when my family set
up internet through them in the 2000s.

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fatnoah
College in 1993 and then an address at my own domain, which I still use as my
primary address, in 1997.

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icedchai
1992: it was a local ISP. In 1993, I got a UUCP feed to my BBS, including
email and Usenet news.

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4ensic
Pxxxx@ix.netcom.com About 1992, it came with the dialup Netcruiser Internet
service.

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chelmzy
Hotmail to use MSN Messenger in the fourth grade. Circa 2004/2005.

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vkaku
My first email address was a Yahoo! address in 1997.

