History of my email accounts:

Way back around 1993, I wrote a book for Byte Magazine with Nick Anus. Nick dropped the project so I had no further contact with the publishers, and Craig Menefee finished it. I don’t know if Nick ever got any of the piles of stuff that I wrote into the book before he quit, but when it was published my name was still on the cover. I never got a copy of the book. I kept my advance, in spite of threatening calls from McGraw-Hill.

McGraw Hill gave me a free AOL account and it stayed free for about 5 years. When the bookkeeping caught up with me I paid for the account. I still have this ID and still receive tons of spam there. 15 years is a long time to have an email account.

I ran the BillSite.com web server on a machine in my office at Lockheed for several years in the mid 90s and I was [email protected]. I used the email extensively and you can still find it in message archives. BillSite was an early version of PayPal.com, but the emphasis was for automatic bill paying online. It could do everything that PayPal did, but it never took off. I spent a lot of time with my buddy Phil getting the site to work, but it all went away eventually. I still want to get the billsite domain back, just to see if I get any mail, but it’s a good domain name and I’m not likely to get it, even if the current owner lets it expire.

Around the same time that HotMail started, Ziff Davis started a site called ZDNet and it had a free email solution. It was run by OneBox.com. When ZDNet dropped it’s email offering, My account was transferred to OneBox.com and I was promised free email access for life. About two years later OneBox told me to pay for the account or not get mail. I have been using OneBox for important business email for about twelve years now and I felt it was more secure because I paid for the service.

I have since switched most of my email to GMail.com, which I love. I still use the AOL account for money things, because I feel it is the most stable of my email accounts. All of my newer accounts do not use OneBox.

This morning I tried to log into OneBox to get my mail and the site claims my account is suspended. They are not answering their phone. I have a feeling that I had better start getting my ducks in a row. I still have a few accounts where the primary contact is my onebox email. I have to identify these and try to transfer them to gmail or aol. This may be difficult because sometimes they send you a confirming email.

I just checked and I have about ten really major accounts that still use onebox.