Long back I had a gmail id which I used actively till 2007. Then I used it as a secondary email id till about 2010 and then I stopped using it. It was tied to my phone number that I had in college days. I don’t even remember that phone number anymore.

So in 2020, when I wanted to like check that email id, Google just locked me out. It told me I needed to enter the security code that it sent to my mobile number (the one I used back in 2004). No amount of emailing, contacting google support was useful. It didn’t have a recovery email id etc. So I just gave up and forgot about it.

Recently, I was going through some old hardware. A raspberry pi that I used to run my home automation system. And somehow this email was attached to it on the firefox. I was able to recover it.

I started reading some of the old emails that I had written and received back in 2005. So good memories. Also I wrote a lot of emails back then.

I also got my first email id back in 1996 with Hotmail and then one later with Yahoo back in 1997 or 1998. I bet there were some crazy good email converstations in them till 2004. But it is a pity that both Hotmail and Yahoo deleted all my emails when those accounts weren’t used for a long time.

I am glad that even without logging into this gmail account for like 10 years, google still didn’t delete the emails.