Ask HN: How to get off old email addresses?

3 points·doitLP··2 comments

I have several old email addresses. I have used them for sign ups etc and it seems impossible to just close them. I want to transition to a more private, paid email address.

Have you managed to transition off and gracefully deprecate old email addresses? How?

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You have to identify all the sign-ups that you care about that use the old e-mail address. Log in to each one and update the address to the new one. Don't forget things like mailing list subscriptions and government services that you log into once in a blue moon (e.g. government tax site, used once a year).

Similarly, get all your important contacts to update to the new address.

Set up forwarding from the old e-mail to the new one, if you can.

Stop sending anything from the old one.

I think it's really hard to fully close an old email address. I migrated from one email address to another ten years ago, and I still get personal correspondence sent to the old one.

I told everyone I know that I'm using a new email address, I set up forwarding, I only send using the new email address, and I have an auto-respond message that I'm not using that email address and to send to the new one instead, and nonetheless people still send to it.

Also, for security reasons I'd recommend to not close the old email address, because if you happen to forget an account there, there is some risk that someone nefarious could grab the old email address and have password resets sent there.

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