back to article My name is Dabbsy and I am an EMAILOHOLIC

I think I have 30 email addresses; I’m not sure. I suspect there may be others. I have them on every computer and even carry some around on my smartphone. At the height of my addiction, I was creating domains and distributing email addresses to my wife and my employees. I even gave some to my kids. Clip from the Father Ted TV …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. ukgnome

    Hi Dabbsy ...

    My name is Gnomey...I am also an emailcoholic...

    Although within the last few years I have had my wife rationalise my Email accounts, she was very good at explaining that I didn't actually need a mail server...and she also pointed out that whilst my hugh.janus email address is amusing it's not professional.

    So now I make do with the 3 client email addresses, the 2 company email addresses and admin on 2 shared email accounts, as well as the 4 personal email addresses.

    11 isn't that bad is it?

    1. VinceH

      "Although within the last few years I have had my wife rationalise my Email accounts"

      I don't have a wife to rationalise mine (no woman will put up with me for long enough), so I recently did it myself (ooer).

      I still have shedloads of addresses in effect (because of the unique address for each site/sign-up/whatever approach), but I've whittled it down to a couple of mailboxes. Day to day, I use just a couple of addresses.

  2. GlenP Silver badge

    I am also an emailcoholic...

    My personal domain has unlimited addresses so there's the personal one, the one I use for mailing lists, one for shopping, one for work related stuff and another for purely mobile. Even the blooming model railway has its own email addy! Fortunately they're mostly running IMAP and synch ok between laptops, tablet and phone.

    Add to that the two main work addresses (personal and generic IT) plus the one that's on an independent non-Exchange domain, and the admin address...

    Oh and there's that old address I used to use but don't any more but I have to check it 'cause some people haven't got the message.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Synch" would be pronounced like "cinch", and is not thus a phonetically sound abbreviation of "synchronise". "Sync" on the other hand does work phonetically, and that is what you should use.

      Off-topic, pedantic and not on completely academically sound footing, I know, but I'm still right.

      1. NumptyScrub
        Headmaster

        quote: ""Synch" would be pronounced like "cinch", and is not thus a phonetically sound abbreviation of "synchronise"."

        English apparently has at least 3 sounds for ch, with a voiceless velar stop (k sound) already used in words like choir and cholera. It's entirely legitimate to claim that you assumed everyone would pronounce "synch" with the k sound, rather than say an sh sound as in chef.

        As always, I'm sure that this post harping on about language use also contains misuse of language, as per Muphry's law ^^;

        1. Alistair Dabbs

          >> English apparently has at least 3 sounds for ch

          I tried all three just now and had to clean my screen with a wet wipe.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Synch

        Is pronounced 'sink'

        Serious users of the word will say, when the synching (sinking) is completed, that it's 'sunk'

        That's AFAIK

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yup.

    Loads of 'em. All over.

    My girlfriend knows about 2. And already she thinks I use one of them for illicit purposes.

    God knows what she'd do if she found out the extent of it.

    Plus there are the additional aliases that most providers let you have.

    (I set the maximum 10 so that no one else can has an email address similar to mine.)

    Up until now I thought I was the only person who'd done this.

    There are people at work who only have their work email address and use this for everything:

    Weirdos!

  4. Admiral Grace Hopper

    Kill them with fire

    I've just done a purge of old email addresses and centralised everything on one single account, and yet ... I've still got a nagging thought that there's something somewhere poised to send a vitally important mail to one of the old accounts now gathering dust and spam.

  5. Andrew Moore

    I feel inadequate...

    Only 3 email addresses here, and one of them came from CIX rationalising from cix.compulink.co.uk to cix.co.uk

  6. Irongut

    Hmm let me see... main work address, work support address, generic IT dept address, main home address, GMail address, Hotmail address, address for Reg comments, spam address, address for dodgy websites, gf address for when I'm buying things on her card, address for one of my mates who doesn't have a computer, unused address from mobile phone company.

    I can think of 12 atm but there might be more. :o

  7. Christoph

    Lots and lots of email addresses. 1 work, 1 personal, several for domains associated with various hobbies, and a large batch of individual email addresses for each company I register with, so I can tell if they sell my address to spammers and can then redirect the address to abuse@that.company

  8. Anonymous IV

    One per company dealt with

    Of those I have 135 (at present), forwarded to my standard email address. Takes 15 seconds to set up a new one. If I get spam on any of the forwarder addresses, I can simply close it down.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: One per company dealt with

      Of course, it could be that your remaining 134 addresses are being spoofed to send junk to the rest of us.

  9. MJI Silver badge

    Lets count

    Hmm

    1 - Work

    2 - One the PC told me to do (MSN via Hotmail)

    3 - My Hotmail spam proof email

    4 - Abandoned from onetel

    5 - Abandoned from ukonline

    6 - current BT

    7 - Ebay bt

    8 - fullname@fullname.co.uk

    9 - firstname@surname.me.uk

    10 - Googlemail

    11 - Abandoned from a forum

    I use 5 regularly, work, the MSN for webmail, my BT, Ebay BT as they refused my BT, and my .me.uk

  10. Captain Scarlet
    WTF?

    Why does everyone have so many

    I have two, my work one and my personal one.

    I do have another but its just a forwarder as I am to lazy to manage and maintain my own personal mailserver anymore.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Why does everyone have so many

      Fair question. I receive scores of press releases and beta forum posts every day. It helps to keep them clear of my main email while I'm mobile

    2. mrjobby

      Re: Why does everyone have so many

      Same as you: one personal and one work. The work I use for work and the personal one I hardly ever use 'cos I don't like emailing people (or phoning them, or communicating in general).

    3. Shooter

      Re: Why does everyone have so many

      Well, I started with just a Compuserve email account, but that went by the wayside when Compuserve did. Then I went to an actual ISP, and used their assigned email. Decided that I should have a second account from them for activities that seemed likely to generate spam (oddly enough, those two accounts have since swapped places).

      Then I got a laptop in addition to my desktop computer, and it became awkward to keep the ISP email accounts in sync. So I opted for a Yahoo email account, followed shortly thereafter by a second, for the same reasons that I have two ISP accounts (also oddly enough, those two accounts have NOT swapped places - say what you like about Yahoo, but their spam filter performs pretty well). Then my employer got all electronified, so I have a work account as well.

      Then came the mobile revolution, and I got an email addy from my wireless provider - though I never actually use it for anything; it seems to belong more to my wireless account than to me personally. And of course a gmail account was required, soon to be followed by a second one (see reasons noted above). And now that I've acquired a Windows tablet, I've also acquired an outlook,com address, but so far I've resisted the temptation to actually use that one.

      So that's how I wound up with nine more-or-less active email accounts, plus the forlorn ghost of a Compuserve account, condemned to forever wander cyperspace in silence.

  11. GregC

    A colleague found it strange when I told him I've got 6....

    Turns out that's not many after all :)

    Work, hotmail.com (spam bucket, used for free wifi and anything else that asks for an unnecessary email addy), hotmail.co.uk, gmail, yahoo (second spam bucket) and the one my ISP gave me. At some point I've probably used each of them to create an account for something or other, the forgotten password process consists of typing each address in turn until one of them gets recognised...

  12. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Coat

    NOBODY needs more than two e-mail addresses

    My e-mail address is personal... and... my two e-mail addresses are personal and work... My three addresses are personal, work, and job hunting.... My four... no... amongst my e-mail addresses are personal, work, job hunting, spam... I'll sync them up again...

    (Does each identity in the spam address so you can tell who spammed it count as a whole one or a half?)

    1. AndrueC Silver badge

      Re: NOBODY needs more than two e-mail addresses

      Actually it's a great anti-spam system. Every contact I make gets their own email addy. That means if I get spam I know why. I can block just that specific addy and/or notify the 'owner' of what has happened. It all works without any intervention by me (unless I have to black list an addy) because it's based on wildcards.

  13. monkeyfish

    I once met a man that had the address:

    hotmale@hotmail.com (or possibly hot_male@hotmail.com, I can't quite remember).

    God knows how early in the life of hotmail he signed up to get that one with no numbers. I had to have numbers after my actual name, and I don't have a very common surname at that. I wonder if it's still in use?

  14. DropBear

    Feels weird to be the odd one out on the apparently "normal" side of things - I just have whatever the company sets up for me at work (I refuse responsibility for how many aliases and different company domains they set up for me, so I count it as one), a real.name@domain.com one for personal financial and other real-me stuff, and an obscure one I use with any number of "anonymous identities" for absolutely everything else where I need more than a 10 minute throwaway one. Considering the "real" address can be used to recover passwords to pretty much anything I log into with it, I'd obviously rather not use it to log into every darn place I'll visit once-in-a-blue-moon-to-never-again.

  15. Big_Boomer Silver badge

    Spam avoidance

    I have my own domains and regularly change the "active" email address for each to avoid spam, so in theory I have an infinite number of email addresses. In practice I have 6 web-mail, 3 work(due to mergers), and 4 home addresses that I check at varying intervals. However, soon you will start suffering from withdrawal as not satisfied with the more convenient store&forward method of email, we are all slowly being coaxed to use the far more in-your-face chat and IM methods like Twatter.

    Heed my words,.... email is DOOMED! ;-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Spam avoidance

      You say that email is doomed and we should use Twitter & FB?

      What about those of us who have eschewed Twatter and FB?

      I know of a good number of people who have closed their social media account because of the spam and abuse and gone back to email.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What no free ones from mobiles?

    Dabbsy,

    At the risk of inducing a relapse, are you sure you don't have some email addresses floating around from having registered on a mobile operator's website? I'm sure I've got two or three o2.co.uk addresses where I've joined, left, rejoined them.

    1. MrT

      HAD free O2 ones...

      ... they all got shut down last November. I tend to stick around until chucked out at the bitter end, which is why my O2 ones were more like trophies. I had a friend running CBL at University of Leeds who kept my staff account from the very early 90's going until the day he retired about 15 years later. I miss that one - sentimental I suppose - but not the O2 ones; they marked the final end of my association with a company I hadn't dealt with since about 2005.

  17. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    Thanks to my disposable email address system I have an infinite number of email addresses. Nearly 30 of them are now blacklisted though.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coffee/keyboard

      another way to do it

      I, like some folks above and probably below, have my own mail server. When I create a throwaway address, its obviously throwaway, for example: att-delete-after-registering@mydomain.tld is just an alias for my real account. Once I've clicked on the confirm link, I delete the alias. It does make it awkward when talking to an actual helpful tech support person and giving them an address that starts with 'throwaway-' or 'garbage-', but somehow, I survive.

      1. MondoMan

        So it's YOU ...

        that has been swooping in and taking all the throwaway@domainx.com box names!

  18. Alistair
    Pint

    Not me, no not me, but a friend has

    Had several domain names registered over the years and has (websitetarget)@(domainname).(tld) for a rather long list of websites -- it has been interesting to see his stats on which websites throw your email addy out there for marketing purposes. But he doesn't have a problem. No. Not an issue with :

    (last I checked) 700+ email addresses.

    and its is friday. Beer.

  19. The Bit Wrangler

    One email to bind them all...

    I used to use my work email for EVERYTHING but, when they made me redundant (unexpectedly redundant too...) the monumental PIA that was switching everything across to another email address gave me pause for thought. I then bought a domain and run on whichever ISP-given (or other) email account I feel comfortable with pointed to from my shiny domain.

    This means I can switch ISPs without a big hassle (just point the domain at the new account). It also means I can use individual usernames for each individual company I deal with and, therefore, know when some scumbag has sold my details on to spam providers. Very satisfying :-) you can not only whine at them for doing such you can also block the emails by forwarding that user to oblivion.

    Work email address is now just for work, which is actually a nice separation of work/home. I don't really consider it "mine".

  20. joeW
    Alert

    Don't leave me hanging

    "finding something that supports POP, IMAP, custom Exchange, Google weirdness and the frankly strange iCloud in one program without cocking any of them up is quite a challenge"

    So, what did you end up using?

    1. John 110

      Re: Don't leave me hanging

      +1

      (The post is required, and must contain letters.)

      1. MondoMan

        Re: Don't leave me hanging

        +10 and a free email address

  21. T. F. M. Reader

    Running scared - but not able to hide

    I've had a number of email addresses in the past. Most of them I do not use anymore (say, from previous workplaces, probably disabled), but a couple are still functional and even redirected to a catchall address that I do use (they are actually forwarding aliases, not genuine mailboxes that can be independently accessed). I am no longer affiliated with the organizations that provided the aliases. No one emails those addresses. None of my friends or colleagues knows them (or the catchall address to which they are forwarded).

    But LinkedIn do. I am not a member of LinkedIn or any other social network. Nevertheless, LinkedIn not only know of my old (think mid-90ies) unused addresses but they are also able to somehow link them to my friends and acquaintances none of whom has ever used them or even knew of them. As a result, an acquaintance logs on to LinkedIn and gets a "suggestion" to connect to me (by name, not by an unfamiliar address). "Hmm, didn't think he was on LinkedIn, but if he is it's weird we are not connected..." is a natural thought, followed by a click on the helpful button. I get an email and see which address LinkedIn sent an email to in the headers. Curse. Shrug. Ignore. Cue multiple annoying "pending invitation" reminders from LinkedIn.

    The fact that the bastards are able to figure out a connection between an email alias not used for at least 10 years to friends and acquaintances who are not even aware of that address, combined with the fact that I am completely outside the LinkedIn network and they should not know me at all, is genuinely scary. Yes, also impressive - though they probably just bought some metadata+analytics from Google (or NSA?).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Running scared - but not able to hide

      Who do you think buys up all of the Dell, HP, etc, end-of-lease machines. You typically only have to get a single unscrubbed drive to get a full company directory.

    2. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Running scared - but not able to hide

      I don't like LinkedIn's way of amalgamating all of one's email addresses into its account simply because someone tries to add you to their network using the wrong email. I keep my domestic email strictly personal and separate from work, as I do with Facebook. The last thing I need is for my exchanges with my daughter studying in Amsterdam to be interspersed with blathering from irate readers and PRs.

  22. IsJustabloke
    Meh

    UH-OH... I think I may be one too....

    I have a separate email address for every single organization / website/forum that requires an address of me, I must have hundreds by now :(

    They all feed into 2 or 3 addresses to rule them all. :(

  23. Mark #255

    QotD

    "All important material is directed automatically to a Spam folder where it festers indefinitely." Thank you Mr Dabbs!

    Anyway, I have Too Many™, even if you discount the unlimited aliases you get with your own domain name.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quality, not Quantity

    If you work at a university, the day you get to add the alias "SYSOP" to your account, well, that's the day it doesn't matter how many other email accounts you have, because you are now SYSOP.

    But back to the story, I have three main accounts, plus some other cruft at hotmail, gmail, yahoo, Office365, even lycos, as well as my alumni account from university (which is now only used as a "ping" account to make sure email is flowing in and out of my employer's system). I never use the email account my ISP assigned me, it's total crap.

    1. Sarah Balfour

      Re: Quality, not Quantity

      "Alumni account"...?! My gods, how many are there of you, man...?! ;oD

      I'm assuming only one, in which case, it's 'alumnus' (or if you're female (and I'm 99.9% certain from the way you write, you're not) 'alumna'. Feminine plural..? 'Alumnae').

      Ain't Latin a bitch...?!

      All together now...

      Latin is a language

      Dead as dead can be...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quality, not Quantity

        Romanes eunt domus

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Retirement planning

    In the US we have the aptly named CANSPAM act, which immunizes vendors from being guilty of spam if they follow some rules, such as providing an opt-out checkbox and an Unsubscribe option.

    I once gave some thought to creating separate email accounts for each business entity. Something like fordjohndoe@mail.com, ibmjohndoe@mail.com.

    The plan:

    1. When registering with the unique email address, uncheck the "may we spam you?" option and take a screen snapshot.

    2. Wait for the email address to be sold, and/or their own spam to come in.

    3. Find a lawyer and negotiate a hefty settlement.

  26. Cian Duffy

    I'm now stuck with four email addresses in the one permanent workplace - surnameinitial@mainbusiness, firstname.surname@secondarybusiness, firstname@tertiarybusiness and first.surname@parentcompany

    Add to that the monstrous number I collected when every ISP close to forced you to use theirs (blocking SMTP to other servers, old ISP restricting SMTP to their network) and I can probably beat 40.

  27. Jobsy
    Pint

    eWorld

    i still have an eworld invite hanging around......... *looks shifty*

    R

  28. Allan George Dyer
    Holmes

    You're not really an addict until you have a domain mailbox.

    One time I duplicated the addresses for everyone in the company, because of an error in the domain name on the printed brochures. With no time left before the exhibition, the easy solution was to register the new domain name.

  29. chivo243 Silver badge
    Pint

    Do Public Mailboxes/folders count?

    Let us see, the insanity has to be near 30

    Primary personal

    Secondary personal, the one you don’t open at work!

    Primary Work

    Secondary Work, admin stuff

    ISP Provided account

    House account, yes one for the house, for mail from the utility companies etc

    Throw-a-way account for registering/verifying I’m a person so the web site can send the crap they really need to need to send

    Newsletter/forum repository

    20+ Public Mailboxes/folders - work related

    I’ve always been to lazy to set up my own mail server, but with all the communications being monitored/scanned, maybe a home server may be a project worth looking into.

    Have a pint for the weekend!

  30. M Gale

    I guess I could be the worst of the lot.

    Domain names with wildcard redirects. AS MANY EMAIL ADDRESSES AS YOU LIKE. My god, it's like concentrated cocaine.

    On the plus side, it's amusing to see people trying to exploit majordomo@, listserve@, root1@, root2@, root3@...

    Oh Mr Bayes, how I love you. As much as a man can love another man nonsexually.

  31. midcapwarrior

    Thought I was doing well until

    Needed to have a password reset before I could use airline miles.

    Called in and they set they would send a temp to the email address I used to register.

    The just needed me to confirm.

    After going through 8 addresses the nice lady finally gave me a hint by saying the provider.

    It was a provider that closed shop 10 years ago.

  32. SVV

    Good luck with the cold turkey

    It started simply enough for me with the "mail" command on unix multiuser systems.

    Before too long I was operating full sendmail systems, and eventually after about 15 years succumbed to installing full Active Directory / Outlook Windows servers whilst at work, which drove me insane.

    These days I still dabble about occasionally with self hosted mail systems on Linux for purely recreational purposes, but generally have grown out of it in favour of a manageable 2 web based mail accounts system for spam and real emails I want to read.

  33. Vociferous

    Hmmm... I've never counted them....

    One linuxmail, two... no three on Yahoo, at least six on Gmail*, one Facebook invented for me without asking, my work email, the one my ISP foisted on me (aXiP2FsQ@surfanytime.co.uk -- gee, thanks!). So, just 12.

    That doesn't count as addiction, does it?

    * I have to create a new one every time Gmail refuses to let me in unless I ritually sacrifice my cellphone number to Google.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Independent coffee shops

    Alastair Dabbs needs to move here to BANES/East Somerset where independent coffee shops know all about soya milk and never have dirty cups.

    Email - who cares about email when you have a functioning town centre?

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funny this should come up now

    I'd just been thinking that apart from work and spam, I don't get email anymore - for personal communication everyone I know is using IM of one sort or another - email's so 1990's

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Third email required.

    You actually need a third email id for maintaining the sanity of the first two. All those websites that require you to register and then spam the hell out. I haven't opened my third email Id inbox in 16 years now. Has been around for 18 years.every web registration gets this email-id.

    I rarely get spammed on my personal or official email id.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like