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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere. |
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28 Mar 2019, 08:53 PM | #1 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,683
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Why keep old email?
It is cheap and easy to store email forever. My Gmail stash goes back to 2006. And, despite an annual culling of old commercial messages, bills, and other non-personal stuff I have over 5 GB of the stuff lurking out there in the cloud somewhere. I have no doubt that clever searches would be able to fish out information useful to phishers, and of course what I have stored in Drive might be even more valuable.
Recently I have begun to wonder what it would be like to just delete most of this stuff. Maybe keep just the last year or two, or maybe five years worth. My typical email search is for something from the last few months. Occasionally, I have to go back a few years to find someone's email address that for some reason doesn't pop up when I start typing. And, yes I know there are some interesting reads back in the early period, but is it really worth keeping all that junk? Are we just hoarders? |
29 Mar 2019, 03:36 AM | #2 |
Cornerstone of the Community
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 551
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I wished I had kept some old hotmail messages. I was new to computers at the time and sent my niece and nephew messages. My niece sent me a long reply full of big words and fancy phrases. The underlying message was "don't bother me I'm busy". I've kicked my butt for deleting that gem.
Today, I prune regularly but keep anything significant. |
29 Mar 2019, 06:21 AM | #3 | |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 2,898
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Quote:
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1 Apr 2019, 06:57 PM | #4 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,933
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1 Apr 2019, 09:21 PM | #5 | |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,683
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Quote:
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2 Apr 2019, 01:12 AM | #6 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,933
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It depends on what one means by "same". Of course the bulk of paper documents is not the same as of emails, and the ease of search is very different, but the question "keep or destroy" is common.
On a personal note: some 10 years ago I deliberately [too much hassle to move from my then work account to elsewhere] abandoned some 4-5 years' worth of personal emails [yes, from a work account, guilty as charged...], from various correspondents. I'm still in touch with them from a different address, and I never really needed any of the abandoned emails. |
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