POLL: email history?

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  • fredddddd

    How many years of emails do you have access to still?

    We've all had jobs we left, new url's, hotmail, gmail.

    If you start a new business and have a personal email for that business, do you keep 99% of the emails you get forever?

  • sine0

    my gmail goes back about 5 years

    • not that i need it, but with gmail you don't have to delete it either.sine
    • but i do sometimes search for really old emails to get info i haven't stored elsewhere yet.sine
  • fyoucher10

    Every business-related email I've ever had. 14 years worth.

    • I use hotmail paid storage for archiving (10GB, $20 a year), just in case something happens with my site's email stufffyoucher1
  • _me_0

    hotmail [ used for random shit ] = 12+ yrs
    personal mail [ my own website url ] = 10+ yrs
    work [ businesses ive been at ] kept separate and archived constantly

    never had gmail

  • Xopher0

    Anything work-related goes after a year. Is this not normal then?

  • chossy0

    Nothing over a year old. Unless it is contractual stuff or legal stuff, that never gets deleted.

  • formed0

    I've probably got 12 years worth...need to sift through/organize it

  • formed0

    I would not think you would delete emails until at least 7 years.

    Considering the IRS wants at least 7 years of records, not sure why'd you delete emails and not anything else. Also, for legal purposes, always good to have access.

    I just like being able to know what we did for a client, how they were responsive, etc., if they show up years later (and they do).

  • ETM0

    Unless it's an exception (contract, login info), at the start of the new year, I nuke anything 2 years old.

  • ribit0

    Still have emails from a friend when he first got online in 1997...

    RIBIT! GREETING FROM THE REFRIGERATOR! WE GOT A BOX WITH TONS OF ELECTRONIC STUFF INSIDE. DOES IT WORK? DIMI, SEND BITS AND BYTES SOON.
    ...

    Netscape is now, finally, up and running . I find that graphically the images/pages are of a higher quality . The colours and aliasing on the images/text seem to be crisper. Graphically, the interface is also a lot nicer, more elegant. Do you also find that pages load faster in Navigator as opposed to AOL?
    ...

    Yesterday I went to a Mac store and saw my first iMac. We stared at each other from across the room, the light from above throwing our shadows before us, blending and smearing them together as they met on the floor.

    As I got closer the screen saver relinquished its hold on the darkness that the iMac had known until this moment, a darkness that had threatened to choke and torment the tiny machine. It fled from the depths of the beautiful blue lagoon wich it had haunted for these many days, thrashing its way about, like a school of hunted fish, not knowing were to go, consumed by the need to swim to safety, feeling deep in their primitive souls, that today would be their last.

    As if bewitched by a distant source , the desktop appeared, mocking and flirting, its HD icon swaying languidly side to side. In the distance I could here my wife's voice, begging me to stop, calling me back, her voice faint and distant. I felt myself going forward, staring in the cool blue waters before me, my thoughts running like newly born foals, celebrating a joy which they could not understand, would not question.

    My hand slowly reached for my wallet, Liz's cries becoming more frantic, my In-laws afraid and confused, not quite understanding, the iMac almost quivering in anticipation, our love threatening to overwhelm us...

    Just then I stopped, shaken and sweating, as if from a powerful disturbing dream. I had seen something out of the corner of my eye, perhaps simply felt something there beyond the light. I turned suddenly, frantically searching, almost clawing at the air as if to pull aside the fog that would magically reveal that which I had seen.

    And then it appeared, shy but strangely confident. A PowerBook. I felt my heart beating wildly, the sound of its pounding in my head drowning out the cries around me...

    Again my hand reached for my wallet... but I could not. Would not, yet. And so it ended, that day at the store, and the pain is still there.

  • ribit0

    I never fully delete anything (although I might archive and delete from the mail client if it is overloaded). Disk space just keeps getting cheaper, so I can't see any reason to lose access to all that (searchable) history.

  • Horp0

    Still got some seriously old stuff from the late mid-to-late 90's on CDr and some folders of old email on xHD that have somehow managed to leap with other data that I've pulled through the years onto each successive storage media. Sometimes out of a desire for nostalgia I'll crack open an old archive and start to read it. It usually takes about twenty seconds before I'm on fire with embarrassment about the kind of shit I would say and the sort of things I'b be involved in discussions about.

    The past, when experienced as a memory, always has you as the hero.

    The past, as an archive, always suggests you were an insufferable tool.

    • I mainly just don't recognise me in stuff I clearly wrote.ribit
    • Yes, that's a very strong and unusual feeling. I bet there's a word for that feeling in German. Auschluss ...?Horp