How far back do you keep archives of your old e-mail?

[aphex]

I just looked and i've got about 3-4 years worth of old e-mail (crap deleted, only the actual stuff). That was the last time I did a big e-mail purge and just started over.

How about yourself?

 

[JohnCU]

business email i keep forever if it is important. personal gets deleted every month or so.

the oldest one is from january 05 where i purchased nero 6

 

[invidia]

I still have my original e-bay account info message: 9 years.

 

[SlitheryDee]

less than a week.

 

[Jeff7]

2001

E-mail doesn't take up much space, so there's no real need to delete it.

 

[xSauronx]

ive never really gotten into using email much, i have some messages in my gmail box that are maybe over a year old, thats about it. i use it now to archive anything important: receipts for purchases, account info from forums and websites, a few personal bits (very few) and some miscellaneous stuff

 

[Colt45]

A few years worth. I lost all the older stuff in a meltdown

 

[DaveJ]

I've got personal email going back to 1997... I'd have it all the way back to 1995 but I lost two years worth due to a stupid mistake. Work emails I have going back to 1998.

Disk space is cheap, why not keep it all?

 

[JohnCU]

Originally posted by: DaveJ
I've got personal email going back to 1997... I'd have it all the way back to 1995 but I lost two years worth due to a stupid mistake. Work emails I have going back to 1998.

Disk space is cheap, why not keep it all?

the company i works for automatically deletes all emails after 2 years

 

[Shawn]

i have e-mails going back to 2001 on my desktop. on my yahoo mail account which I no longer use I have e-mail going back to 1999.

 

[Squisher]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
2001

E-mail doesn't take up much space, so there's no real need to delete it.

Same for me. I've got Outlook Express Backup Wizard just to make it easy.

I've reformatted or upgraded my harddrive 3 or 4 times since then.

 

[newb111]

Ever since I signed up with gmail for my domain

 

[daniel1113]

I have all my personal mail going back to 2002. Except for blatant junk mail and miscellaneous crap, I keep everything archived in Gmail and backed up on my computer.

My business mail, on the other hand, gets purged every 30 days aside from a few important emails that get archived.

 

[Praetor]

According to gmail, my oldest e-mail is dated Thu, Oct 3, 1996 at 11:31 PM

 

[bobsmith1492]

Gmail = hopefully forever, assuming they keep increasing the storage limit...

 

[IEC]

I'm going to go through and nuke all my old ones once I graduate.

After I download them to disk and archive into encrypted 7zip, of course.

 

[desolation777]

i shoot to have as much unread mail as possible...up to 6033 unread woo

 

[OdiN]

I have everything back quite a ways.

My oldest email saved is dated:

10/23/2000

 

[nageov3t]

my oldest email account -- hotmail -- got wiped due to inactivity a couple years ago :frown:

since I moved over to gmail, I've never had a reason to delete emails, I just hit archive on anything that isn't spam/promotional stuff.

the oldest email on my gmail account is 7/29/04

 

[Adam8281]

As far back as it goes - around 1998

 

[KK]

thinking of old stuff, what happens if say when you were 13-14 you took some naked photos of yourself, and you for some reason kept them. Ten years later, could you be found guilty of having child porn?

 

[nageov3t]

Originally posted by: KK
thinking of old stuff, what happens if say when you were 13-14 you took some naked photos of yourself, and you for some reason kept them. Ten years later, could you be found guilty of having child porn?

it's crazy, but I was actually thinking about that today if one created an x-rated video of themselves when they were underage, kept it on their hard drive for a decade, and then decided to distribute it, would they be prosecuted for child porn? who'd be the exploited person in that scenario?

 

[1sikbITCH]

I read it, I delete it.

I save Ebay emails and anything where I was sent info I need to save. But everything else gets gone. I hate clutter.

 

[GeekDrew]

Some emails I'm permanently keeping - just about all the personal ones, and some business ones. Some business communications, I delete on a rotating schedule based upon legal retention schedules, for my safety and security.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Earliest is March 06 for this account.