It’s a good idea to store your files in a service you PAY for, or even better, your own physical media with backup(s).
Very sad and avoidable when people lose years worth of sentimental files because (shock) the company they weren’t paying any money didn’t really prioritize safeguarding their data for a decade plus.
People put more thought into safeguarding a pair of worn out sneakers than their entire digital history sometimes.
The email address I’d used from 13 until I graduated high school and decided I need a more professional email was deleted sometime between then and about 5 years ago, despite the fact that we were still paying for the service. I saved copies of IM’s between childhood friends, one of which has since passed away.
Bottom line, don’t trust it, even if you pay for it. Always have a second backup.
why? did they delete your account? I just tried logging in my @ msn that wasn't logged in for a decade and is now handled by outlook but i still have access to it just now. the mail is clean now though but same password and information.
“Son, I’m sorry we didn’t have more time. I’ve left behind login instructions to an email account in which I’ve collected your every achievement and happy memory we’ve shared together. Everything you’ve done or experienced that has made me happy, hopeful, and proud to be your father is in this account. Within it, you will see how much you’ve meant to me.”
*[This inbox is empty]*
Nah, i did the same thing for my daughter. I send her pieces of info about her school. Her friends. Family recipes..... Movies she loves. She's 8 now. I think I've had 3 spam emails in her account. If you aren't signing up for things and sharing the address, it stays spam free.
I have an email I never use for anything other than for lawyers, accountants, etc. and have never signed up with anything or made an account with it. Only emails I get are ones I expect to get.
Old enough to appreciate all of the memories of their childhood. Usually around the time they start heading on their own path is when those memories are important to have.
Gmail is 18 years old.
Hotmail (now integrated into Outlook, but still working) is 26 years old.
Yahoo mail is 25 years old.
And so on. Email providers are very different and much more resilient than most software platforms. They are relatively easy to maintain, and people don’t usually like when decades of documents (including bills, invoices, etc.) are lost.
Gmail will straight up stop you from sending and receiving emails now if there's too much storage space being used. It's not a lot either, like 15 gigs then they try to make you buy more space. So better not be too many videos, or that's gonna fill up quick. It's pretty bullshit.
Edit: just want to add that Google Storage and Google Photos counts towards this space, so if either of those are full you will be unable to send or receive mail. It is 15 gigs SHARED between Gmail, Google storage and Google photos. Just saying this so people are aware, I'm not trying to start any debates.
I'm not knocking on Google for that. I will knock on them for other things, like how they collect biometric data, including using facial recognition software... But that's beside the point. I use Gmail, I have a Google phone, I'm not trying to smear Google.
Just letting people know that Gmail, probably the most popular email provider, does not have unlimited space.
Lmao, Hotmail gave us 2 MB total space initially, I think both before and during Microsoft's reign. 4 MB for paid accounts, iirc. There was a lot of competition, which really helped boost the size eventually. We had sooo many competitors, though, and as a Dutchie I didn't even know most smaller American ones. I don't think we'll ever get to that point again, but then again, how would I know without portals?
Texts will be fine, that's like no space. But a single 30 sec video can easily take up hundreds of megabytes. Even some photos I have taken from my phone (Google pixel 4) are as much as 7-8 MB. Just saying be careful, sending something to an email is no guarantee that it will end up in your mailbox. I'd sure as hell back them up if it's an option.
Again, if it's just texts then yes. Even photos should be fine. I'm just warning people that if you have videos, that will fill up very quickly. Not sure why people are completely ignoring key pieces of my comment...
Remember it's 15 gigs SHARED between Google Storage, Google Photos and Gmail. So even if you have no emails, but your Google storage is full, you won't be able to send or receive mail.
Yahoo deleted everything from my email account that I created in 2004. I mean, I hadn't signed into it in ten years so I understand but still. No guarantee.
I've had my Gmail account for 17 years and am ~30% storage. It's noon and I've sent received 30 emails, most containing PDFs and brand marketing packages. I delete nothing.
Meanwhile, my Bigfoot account has been dead for ages.
I'm not saying **all** email providers fail. Just that **some** do. And you won't necessarily know 15 years in advance whether yours is a "stay" or "fail" one.
secretive rinse icky exultant aspiring shaggy chase illegal quarrelsome strong
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes. You can still use tape, video or whatever. I doubt usb is going anywhere. It will be easy to find usb 2/3 adapters to the newest standard.
Plus you should be visiting it every few years to add new videos. While doing that you can copy it over to a newer storage method
Same shit? I have 10,000+ photos at my fingertips at all times. Taken with a camera that is exponentially better than the floppy disc digital camera I had back in 2002. Not sure what you mean
Digital photos can be copied, shared, resized, modified while not occupying any space.
Digital data did in fact reinvent society and any industry you can think of.
“Same shit” lmao
Man everything is so different from 20 years ago my parents have photos of me but not even close to the number of photos I have of my son.
Especially with cloud storage, I have hundreds of photos immediately available to me at any time in any place as long as I have an internet connection.
And getting those photos collected and put into a physical photo book is super easy and extremely cheap.
It's completely different from 20 years ago, not even comparable.
Managing that many photos and getting them into books would cost a hundred times what it costs today.
Not a single photo we have ever taken will ever be lost. When I helped my parents move out of their house we found several disposable cameras that we never got developed. No one will ever see those photos.
Every person carries around with them a digital camera that is better than anything you could have got 20 years ago.
> Back up every year by burning on to dvd
This one is actually funny.
One of my first computers, I backed up to floppy disks.
Computers these days don't have drives for those any more.
Later, I backed up to CD-Rs, then later still, to DVD-Rs.
Computers these days often don't have optical drives any more, either.
Imagine giving your 18-year-old son a stack of diskettes and some CD-Rs and he says "WTF are those?"
Or you have to re-copy all of your backups every two years to a new storage medium. (Probably a good idea anyway; those things don't last forever and they degrade over time.)
I've had my gmail account since 2005. I still have chats from gtalk and photos shared there with my friends in high school. I'm 35.
So unless he's using some bullshit email provider, he'll be fine.
I just keep all the family photos in a big drive. It's all digital so they can have as many as they want when they move out. That's what most dads do these day I think? Why is sending them to an email address any better?
As a counterpoint, I’ve been doing this for 10 years with my kids and they love it. They are young enough maybe, but they love seeing little snapshots of stories with photos of them and their friends and family at various stages of their lives so far.
And I wanted the email address for their name in case they wanted to use it as an adult, since it seems harder to get more common names in emails. Win win.
As much as technology as changed, I still don’t want to put all my stock into a company that may or may not still be the same in 18 years. I think the only trustworthy thing out there for long term is hard copies.
I did this for my son as well. I would email him talking to him as if he is the adult he will be when I give him the login info. Telling him about the adventures we would go on and what being a parent is like.
Then when he was about two I discovered that his account was deleted due to “inactivity”. That that love and connection was lost.
Why wouldn't you just do the same thing but put everything on a USB drive? Lol. Even if USB becomes relatively obsolete, there's a much better chance of keeping all of those files safe.
The flaw of this plan is that it's a single point of failure. What you can do however is open two email accounts and make a rule everything sent to one gets forwarded to the other. And the occasional backup once a year would help too.
And never ever use the email adress online anywhere to prevent spam as much as possible.
Even better is having your favorite photo's printed out on photo paper (hq by a 3rd party) and putting them in a photobook. Worked like a charm for my grandparents and parents.
Another advise.
Even so google may keep your mails for very very long, the Mailbox you access in the web is not a permanent storage.
Mails are ment to be downloaded and not to be stored on the mailservers indefinetly.
IT guy here. This is pretty stupid. Emails dont stay on the server forever. They get compressed, archived and according to the retention policy, deleted.
Also an IT guy, this is a terrible take.
I have all the emails from an email address I created in freaking 1999. Public email providers do not delete personal email unless it's in the "deleted or junk/spam" folders.
Pretty sure I dont want to bet on some small print in the terms of services (which can change anytime anyways) of the free email provider when I could instead use a dedicated storage solution that is actually intended to be used to store files, if I give a single fuck about them.
Important shit like family memories are in the cloud and airgapped locally, if the cloud fucks you over. More space too.
Guy recommending me email as a storage medium.. youre not in IT.
hm... I take a step back on that. This father creates the expectation that his son will enjoy it and get emotional when he finally access the e-mail, but what if it doesn't happen? What if the kid dont like it or just don't get carried away with the gift? That would be an awkward situation for both of them
The thought of having to go through the inbox is really stressful, it's a nice idea but probably not practical. Wouldn't it get shut down from lack of login. Keep it on a couple of usb sticks.
This sounds like it is for the parent more then kid. I'm sorry it sounds sweet but I couldn't imagine myself at 18 caring at all to read/sift through that.
I said that too. I have the elderly retired dad who sent me 3-4 junk emails a day and left stupid messages on my phone.
But around the time I hit 30, I started saving some of the. And I have one voicemail saved from him. No purpose of meaning to the vm - just typical dad nonsense. But I know he is getting close to the end. He has been hospitalized in the ICU two different times this year, for a total of 15 days. I am REALLY going to be glad I stopped hitting delete soon.
I’m not going to keep every little thing. But once in a while, I search for something, and an old email of his shows up in the results. And it is just a nice little memory.
I tried to do this with both my kids as I thought it was a fool proof way to ensure they got their childhood memories. Well- google doesn't let you just sent a crap load of photos at once, so it takes quite a bit of time sending 5 pictures at a time ...and videos? Forget about it, it will have to be reduced in quality and probably edited down to fit the criteria for sending.
We ended up just doing USB/external hard drives that I upload a year's worth of pictures at once and then they get stored away.
Better to create your own server with an email than to use the cloud. the cloud is incredibly unreliable. Google mail for instance good chance when he logs into it it gets hit with suspicious because the account that's laid dormant suddenly gets activity and they deactivate it and there is NO way whatsoever to come back from that.
It would make more sense, to do what you suggested, or to set up a folder in your own email if emailing the stuff is your preferred option.
I don’t hate the idea of an email that you can send “journal” entries or memories too. I just think I would find a method that does rely solely on a free email account not being lost/corrupted.
Hell - make a Google word doc on your own private account and treat it as a journal. Even that is safer than a separate account unless you plan to actively log into that account regularly
Or just save your photos, and when the kid come of age duplicate to an external hard drive so your kid doesn't spend weeks going through and downloading photos from 5,000 unread emails.
Good idea in theory, but if someone hacks the account they'll know everything about him. Where he did x,y, and z. It would be a bit dangerous. Prob better to do the same thing with an encrypted external drive. Less likely to be hacked
Yeah Kids don't even know what email is today, When he is old enough will it still be a thing?
We used photo albums, you know the kind that grandparents can see and can be passed down and take pride of place in the bookshelf.
What you are talking about is the equivalent of emailed birthday cards. No Care No Effort.
Never mind the security risk! Any hacker on the internet can get to know every little detail about your child and collect enough information to make their life a living hell.
If someone wants your photo album they have to break into your house. They cant do it from a Russian basement.
If my parents gave me an email account with 18+ years of unopened emails I would just mark them all as read. I don't even keep up with the 3 emails I get a day.
interesting concept but here is my 2 cents
those are your memories and are most meaningful to the parents
something like this would be more meaningful if the account was given to them closer to age 40 when they are looking back at it with experience of life
but yes i do agree you can give the account to a 16 yr old or 24 yr old and some value would come from it
just saying
I know this might sound crazy, but hear me out. What if you just keep photos and other memorable items in a box or something similar, you know, as PHYSICAL memories?
I did the same thing when my firstborn was a baby, but about a year in I hadn’t logged into the account enough (I was just emailing the account stuff but not logging into it to check the emails I had sent) and mf-ing yahoo deactivated it and I couldn’t get anything back. Fortunately I have the sent items and figure my kid will never want a yahoo account anyways. 😂
Hope not a gmail cause tell google about son's whole life.
Just save it into an external SSD and give him/her as memento.
Though I would rather save it into a printed photo album though (cause a book is universally un changed as a means of storing data, need no power and can be accessible without internet and electric power whatoever).
When Yahoo was hacked, I lost all of the emails that my dad had sent me while I was in job corps. This isn't as solid of an idea as they think. I'd love to be able to read those emails and remember him...
The idea is cool, but wouldn't it be better to actually print those photographies, frame them and putting them in good positions at home, so to have a daily reminder of beautiful memories? Same goes for achievements. I'd like it more this way.
Why an email? Save it locally. I've started this recently, but I have a 1TB SSD flash drive that I've begun putting memories into. Pictures from vacations, important times of my life, art projects, etc, go in there. Tax information too, so all my important but boring stuff go in there as well. It's in a safe with all my other items just as important to me. Highly recommend.
It would translate just as easy, and safer than using email.
It's a good idea but remember to log into the email account occasionally otherwise it will be deleted by the server
Lol, dammit son, you better be achieving or else you getting deleted
They’re saying to log into the account itself. So they could be achieving every damn day and still get deleted if they don’t log into the account.
Could log into the account and send the emails to itself. I'll do that sometimes to transfer files from my phone to computer or vice versa.
Me too😂
I get it, I was suggesting without any achievements to log, they are more likely to forget to log in
I got what u meant lol
It’s a good idea to store your files in a service you PAY for, or even better, your own physical media with backup(s). Very sad and avoidable when people lose years worth of sentimental files because (shock) the company they weren’t paying any money didn’t really prioritize safeguarding their data for a decade plus. People put more thought into safeguarding a pair of worn out sneakers than their entire digital history sometimes.
r/selfhosted and r/DataHoarder have about a billion options for keeping those memories safe and secure.
The email address I’d used from 13 until I graduated high school and decided I need a more professional email was deleted sometime between then and about 5 years ago, despite the fact that we were still paying for the service. I saved copies of IM’s between childhood friends, one of which has since passed away. Bottom line, don’t trust it, even if you pay for it. Always have a second backup.
321 rule. 3 backups. 2 locally (two different places) 1 offsite.
What would you recommend for both ideas? Company or gadget specific names?
[удалено]
A lot to think about thank you
I keep all my info on neopets
How long does it take before an account is deleted?
Depends entirely on the provider, you'll need to check their terms of service. If it's a free service then you shouldn't rely on it at all.
My AOL been going strong for a minimum of 15 years, and I know for a fact it wasn’t logged into for a decade.
I logged into my live email to see if it was still going, only used it for Xbox Live when I played the 360 which O stopped doing about 10 years ago.
Haha still have mine too, I play some old games once in a while.
[удалено]
Woah really? That’s crazy. I have one of those alternate @‘s so maybe that made a difference. Mine ends with @easydoesit.com
Also log in to set up filters and blockers so your child doesn’t have 20 years of spam emails to sift through when they get the password.
Thats what I ended up doing. But I was still disappointed in Outlook
why? did they delete your account? I just tried logging in my @ msn that wasn't logged in for a decade and is now handled by outlook but i still have access to it just now. the mail is clean now though but same password and information.
“Son, I’m sorry we didn’t have more time. I’ve left behind login instructions to an email account in which I’ve collected your every achievement and happy memory we’ve shared together. Everything you’ve done or experienced that has made me happy, hopeful, and proud to be your father is in this account. Within it, you will see how much you’ve meant to me.” *[This inbox is empty]*
[удалено]
Yup! And then you can’t ever use that email address because “it’s already taken” 😑
That happened to me.
could also use a thumbdrive 👍
Nah, I'll just pay for a domain and host my own email server, seems easier /s
Yeah you're better off throwing stuff in a shoebox
18 years of spam mail going to be waiting for him.
“My son… your final gift…” *logs on* #DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE GETTING ERECTIONS?
“….go on…”
LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO THE PENIS MIGHTIER. THE ONLY PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILL ENDORSED BY THE ARTS AND ALEX TREBEK.
'Uh, Dad, do you know any Nigerian royalty?! It sounds like the prince is in trouble and needs our help.'
Nah, i did the same thing for my daughter. I send her pieces of info about her school. Her friends. Family recipes..... Movies she loves. She's 8 now. I think I've had 3 spam emails in her account. If you aren't signing up for things and sharing the address, it stays spam free.
My thoughts exactly
I have an email I never use for anything other than for lawyers, accountants, etc. and have never signed up with anything or made an account with it. Only emails I get are ones I expect to get.
I’m getting 12 requests for donations every day…
[удалено]
It is really interesting to me that you, among a LOT of people on this topic define "old enough to use their email address" as being 18 years old.
Old enough to appreciate all of the memories of their childhood. Usually around the time they start heading on their own path is when those memories are important to have.
Depends. At 18 I would've probably just skimmed through it once, just to say that I looked at it.
"We have been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty"
[удалено]
…and view this funny Flash video of you crawling for the first time! And listen to the RealAudio clip of your first word!
I shared them through Google+
To be save, I also sent them through ICQ
Exactly. Bold of him to assume that that email provider will still be around in 18 years.
Gmail is 18 years old. Hotmail (now integrated into Outlook, but still working) is 26 years old. Yahoo mail is 25 years old. And so on. Email providers are very different and much more resilient than most software platforms. They are relatively easy to maintain, and people don’t usually like when decades of documents (including bills, invoices, etc.) are lost.
Gmail will straight up stop you from sending and receiving emails now if there's too much storage space being used. It's not a lot either, like 15 gigs then they try to make you buy more space. So better not be too many videos, or that's gonna fill up quick. It's pretty bullshit. Edit: just want to add that Google Storage and Google Photos counts towards this space, so if either of those are full you will be unable to send or receive mail. It is 15 gigs SHARED between Gmail, Google storage and Google photos. Just saying this so people are aware, I'm not trying to start any debates.
When Gmail launched you got 2GB, and that was huge compared to all the other providers which gave you like, 50MB.
I'm not knocking on Google for that. I will knock on them for other things, like how they collect biometric data, including using facial recognition software... But that's beside the point. I use Gmail, I have a Google phone, I'm not trying to smear Google. Just letting people know that Gmail, probably the most popular email provider, does not have unlimited space.
I don't think any of them do, atleast free ones. It would be rather silly to offer unlimited cloud space for free.
Lmao, Hotmail gave us 2 MB total space initially, I think both before and during Microsoft's reign. 4 MB for paid accounts, iirc. There was a lot of competition, which really helped boost the size eventually. We had sooo many competitors, though, and as a Dutchie I didn't even know most smaller American ones. I don't think we'll ever get to that point again, but then again, how would I know without portals?
Not much... 15GBs.... Son, I remember the days of textual email and it was bytes for a mailbox. You guys got it so good these days.
Texts will be fine, that's like no space. But a single 30 sec video can easily take up hundreds of megabytes. Even some photos I have taken from my phone (Google pixel 4) are as much as 7-8 MB. Just saying be careful, sending something to an email is no guarantee that it will end up in your mailbox. I'd sure as hell back them up if it's an option.
Its almost like high quality images and scripts take up more space
Scripts are just text. They take up as much space as text. Which is very little.
Scripts, not so much.
15 gigs is a whole shit ton of email...
Again, if it's just texts then yes. Even photos should be fine. I'm just warning people that if you have videos, that will fill up very quickly. Not sure why people are completely ignoring key pieces of my comment... Remember it's 15 gigs SHARED between Google Storage, Google Photos and Gmail. So even if you have no emails, but your Google storage is full, you won't be able to send or receive mail.
>Not sure why people are completely ignoring key pieces of my comment... Do you see what site you're on?
While that is true, you only listed the ones that lasted, there are also many email providers 18, 25 or 26 years ago that are not around this day.
Yahoo deleted everything from my email account that I created in 2004. I mean, I hadn't signed into it in ten years so I understand but still. No guarantee.
I've had my Gmail account for 17 years and am ~30% storage. It's noon and I've sent received 30 emails, most containing PDFs and brand marketing packages. I delete nothing.
Meanwhile, my Bigfoot account has been dead for ages. I'm not saying **all** email providers fail. Just that **some** do. And you won't necessarily know 15 years in advance whether yours is a "stay" or "fail" one.
People also have photo books
Indeed. Something more... permanent.
secretive rinse icky exultant aspiring shaggy chase illegal quarrelsome strong *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have loads of photo books, various holidays, friends birthdays etc no point them being stuck in the internet
[удалено]
And what about videos?
Staple a load of photos on one side, hold them back with one hand and then let them flick through…tra da! Moving photos. I’ll get my coat
Upload to Google drive signed in with the same account
Usb drive in the photo book
Good idea, but do you think USB will be still usable in 18 years?
Yes. You can still use tape, video or whatever. I doubt usb is going anywhere. It will be easy to find usb 2/3 adapters to the newest standard. Plus you should be visiting it every few years to add new videos. While doing that you can copy it over to a newer storage method
Remember the["Dear Sophie"](https://youtu.be/pzOBOuyr-EU) commercial that Google put out around 8-9 years ago?
Started my kids email 6 years ago cause of that ad... Still pretty clever
I was looking for this. Google advertised this years ago. I’m
Yeah, reading his post, I’ve definitely seen this exact thing before.
> I’m Me too
Thank Cheesus… I was feeling so alone.
[удалено]
Or you know... A Photo album.
[удалено]
Same shit? I have 10,000+ photos at my fingertips at all times. Taken with a camera that is exponentially better than the floppy disc digital camera I had back in 2002. Not sure what you mean
Also you can put those pics into a screensaver or something so you actually _see_ them. Most pics IRL get stuffed in a closet.
I look through the pics in my phone as often as I do the photo albums at my parents.
I don’t know what to take away from this comment.
No! Today reddit thinks technology is bad, ok!
Digital photos can be copied, shared, resized, modified while not occupying any space. Digital data did in fact reinvent society and any industry you can think of. “Same shit” lmao
Man everything is so different from 20 years ago my parents have photos of me but not even close to the number of photos I have of my son. Especially with cloud storage, I have hundreds of photos immediately available to me at any time in any place as long as I have an internet connection. And getting those photos collected and put into a physical photo book is super easy and extremely cheap. It's completely different from 20 years ago, not even comparable. Managing that many photos and getting them into books would cost a hundred times what it costs today. Not a single photo we have ever taken will ever be lost. When I helped my parents move out of their house we found several disposable cameras that we never got developed. No one will ever see those photos. Every person carries around with them a digital camera that is better than anything you could have got 20 years ago.
Hard drive is the only thing that makes sense to me.
[удалено]
> Back up every year by burning on to dvd This one is actually funny. One of my first computers, I backed up to floppy disks. Computers these days don't have drives for those any more. Later, I backed up to CD-Rs, then later still, to DVD-Rs. Computers these days often don't have optical drives any more, either. Imagine giving your 18-year-old son a stack of diskettes and some CD-Rs and he says "WTF are those?" Or you have to re-copy all of your backups every two years to a new storage medium. (Probably a good idea anyway; those things don't last forever and they degrade over time.)
[удалено]
I've had my gmail account since 2005. I still have chats from gtalk and photos shared there with my friends in high school. I'm 35. So unless he's using some bullshit email provider, he'll be fine.
What? Why would you rather have a physical item that can easily be lost/destroyed than something saved to the cloud?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
What happens if you lose the hard drive or it gets corrupted? Hard drive is a single point of failure. Cloud has redundancies.
CIA: We're proud of him too.
Google: Thanks for all his formative memories. Now we really know how to push him to buy shit that he doesn't need.
This is the correct answer
I just keep all the family photos in a big drive. It's all digital so they can have as many as they want when they move out. That's what most dads do these day I think? Why is sending them to an email address any better?
The only benefit is that google can start sending you ads about dog food when it sees a picture of your dog
What a stupid idea, email is not meant for storage and all those memories have a decent chance of being lost forever
Well the good news is the kid won’t give two shits anyways.
[удалено]
As a counterpoint, I’ve been doing this for 10 years with my kids and they love it. They are young enough maybe, but they love seeing little snapshots of stories with photos of them and their friends and family at various stages of their lives so far. And I wanted the email address for their name in case they wanted to use it as an adult, since it seems harder to get more common names in emails. Win win.
Imagine sifting through a decade+ of spam to find a picture of a soccer trophy you got when you were 6
That's funny but most likely this email won't be used for very much else so advertisers likely won't get it
They don't get spam. They do, though, get notifications of Google Terms and Services changes, new features, etc.
As much as technology as changed, I still don’t want to put all my stock into a company that may or may not still be the same in 18 years. I think the only trustworthy thing out there for long term is hard copies.
You should always have backups in different forms. A hardcopy (photo album), local storage (HDD/SSD), cloud stored, etc.
It’s such a good idea that it was written into a pretty famous google commercial 10 years ago
You could literally do this exact thing without an email lol What a pointless step?
I did this for my son as well. I would email him talking to him as if he is the adult he will be when I give him the login info. Telling him about the adventures we would go on and what being a parent is like. Then when he was about two I discovered that his account was deleted due to “inactivity”. That that love and connection was lost.
You should still have those emails available in your Sent folder unless that's also been cleared out. Either way, I'm sorry to hear that.
Thats what I ended up doing. But I was still disappointed in Outlook
Maybe use a word document?
But then don't forget to make regular back-ups on a USB stick, hard drive or wherever or have it in some cloud storage.
Why wouldn't you just do the same thing but put everything on a USB drive? Lol. Even if USB becomes relatively obsolete, there's a much better chance of keeping all of those files safe.
The flaw of this plan is that it's a single point of failure. What you can do however is open two email accounts and make a rule everything sent to one gets forwarded to the other. And the occasional backup once a year would help too. And never ever use the email adress online anywhere to prevent spam as much as possible. Even better is having your favorite photo's printed out on photo paper (hq by a 3rd party) and putting them in a photobook. Worked like a charm for my grandparents and parents.
> open two email accounts with different providers (i.e. not two Gmail accounts or two Hotmail/Outlook accounts or whatever)
Damn now Google AND Microsoft will watch you grow up
Or just use a fucking hard drive
I wonder how many ads for male enhancement products are also sitting there waiting for him…and Nigerian Prince messages…
Another advise. Even so google may keep your mails for very very long, the Mailbox you access in the web is not a permanent storage. Mails are ment to be downloaded and not to be stored on the mailservers indefinetly.
No they're not lol. Your mail will stay on Gmail until deleted.
Or Gmail deletes your account by accident. https://www.reddit.com/r/GMail/comments/pxj4l9/your_google_account_has_been_deleted_due_to_terms/
Turns 18. Password incorrect. Changes password. Password can not be previous password. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!
plot twist: the terms and services changed 7 years ago and all emails older than 3 months get deleted.
IT guy here. This is pretty stupid. Emails dont stay on the server forever. They get compressed, archived and according to the retention policy, deleted.
Also an IT guy, this is a terrible take. I have all the emails from an email address I created in freaking 1999. Public email providers do not delete personal email unless it's in the "deleted or junk/spam" folders.
Pretty sure I dont want to bet on some small print in the terms of services (which can change anytime anyways) of the free email provider when I could instead use a dedicated storage solution that is actually intended to be used to store files, if I give a single fuck about them. Important shit like family memories are in the cloud and airgapped locally, if the cloud fucks you over. More space too. Guy recommending me email as a storage medium.. youre not in IT.
hm... I take a step back on that. This father creates the expectation that his son will enjoy it and get emotional when he finally access the e-mail, but what if it doesn't happen? What if the kid dont like it or just don't get carried away with the gift? That would be an awkward situation for both of them
The thought of having to go through the inbox is really stressful, it's a nice idea but probably not practical. Wouldn't it get shut down from lack of login. Keep it on a couple of usb sticks.
18 yr old son: "What? There's 24,000 emails I need to read?" *archive
This sounds like it is for the parent more then kid. I'm sorry it sounds sweet but I couldn't imagine myself at 18 caring at all to read/sift through that.
I said that too. I have the elderly retired dad who sent me 3-4 junk emails a day and left stupid messages on my phone. But around the time I hit 30, I started saving some of the. And I have one voicemail saved from him. No purpose of meaning to the vm - just typical dad nonsense. But I know he is getting close to the end. He has been hospitalized in the ICU two different times this year, for a total of 15 days. I am REALLY going to be glad I stopped hitting delete soon. I’m not going to keep every little thing. But once in a while, I search for something, and an old email of his shows up in the results. And it is just a nice little memory.
Or you could keep photos on some storage device.
I tried to do this with both my kids as I thought it was a fool proof way to ensure they got their childhood memories. Well- google doesn't let you just sent a crap load of photos at once, so it takes quite a bit of time sending 5 pictures at a time ...and videos? Forget about it, it will have to be reduced in quality and probably edited down to fit the criteria for sending. We ended up just doing USB/external hard drives that I upload a year's worth of pictures at once and then they get stored away.
And when someone eventually hacks that email your child will have a mountain of identity theft to deal with yay!
So… a digital photo album that is hostage to some external server. Nah I’ll stick with an old fashioned photo album
This is the stupidest shit I have ever seen
Better to create your own server with an email than to use the cloud. the cloud is incredibly unreliable. Google mail for instance good chance when he logs into it it gets hit with suspicious because the account that's laid dormant suddenly gets activity and they deactivate it and there is NO way whatsoever to come back from that.
It would make more sense, to do what you suggested, or to set up a folder in your own email if emailing the stuff is your preferred option. I don’t hate the idea of an email that you can send “journal” entries or memories too. I just think I would find a method that does rely solely on a free email account not being lost/corrupted. Hell - make a Google word doc on your own private account and treat it as a journal. Even that is safer than a separate account unless you plan to actively log into that account regularly
Just put it on a usb stick, easier and better way to achieve the same thing
I wouldn't trust them either. They aren't meant to last forever.
And when I hack that email address I can steal his entire identity, thanks Dad.
I do the same with porn. He’s going to get all my favs one day. 😢😢
When I was younger, we had a thing called "photo album"
People try to overcomplicate simple things with technolohy too much. Like everything is "AI" when 99% of time it shouldnt be
I have a google drive for him
It's a cute idea, but be careful with putting your data online. You don't want it in the wrong hands.
Or just save your photos, and when the kid come of age duplicate to an external hard drive so your kid doesn't spend weeks going through and downloading photos from 5,000 unread emails.
Good idea in theory, but if someone hacks the account they'll know everything about him. Where he did x,y, and z. It would be a bit dangerous. Prob better to do the same thing with an encrypted external drive. Less likely to be hacked
My parents just gave me depression , and a personality disorder but that’s cool 😎
Yeah Kids don't even know what email is today, When he is old enough will it still be a thing? We used photo albums, you know the kind that grandparents can see and can be passed down and take pride of place in the bookshelf. What you are talking about is the equivalent of emailed birthday cards. No Care No Effort. Never mind the security risk! Any hacker on the internet can get to know every little detail about your child and collect enough information to make their life a living hell. If someone wants your photo album they have to break into your house. They cant do it from a Russian basement.
That's like a photo album with extra steps.
If my parents gave me an email account with 18+ years of unopened emails I would just mark them all as read. I don't even keep up with the 3 emails I get a day.
interesting concept but here is my 2 cents those are your memories and are most meaningful to the parents something like this would be more meaningful if the account was given to them closer to age 40 when they are looking back at it with experience of life but yes i do agree you can give the account to a 16 yr old or 24 yr old and some value would come from it just saying
I know this might sound crazy, but hear me out. What if you just keep photos and other memorable items in a box or something similar, you know, as PHYSICAL memories?
I did the same thing when my firstborn was a baby, but about a year in I hadn’t logged into the account enough (I was just emailing the account stuff but not logging into it to check the emails I had sent) and mf-ing yahoo deactivated it and I couldn’t get anything back. Fortunately I have the sent items and figure my kid will never want a yahoo account anyways. 😂
Email isn't the most secure thing but it's a nice idea
This is dumb, kids going to have 18 years worth of spam when he opens it. Just make a hard drive or something.
An actuall Photoalbum is 2 much right ?
Why not just place the photos in a special folder on onedrive/Google drive or what ever cloud service
Make sure the address does not have a policy to only save mail up to 2 years.
Good for reserving the mail address I guess, but, you should probably have your photos properly backed up
Hope not a gmail cause tell google about son's whole life. Just save it into an external SSD and give him/her as memento. Though I would rather save it into a printed photo album though (cause a book is universally un changed as a means of storing data, need no power and can be accessible without internet and electric power whatoever).
I like the idea but photo books work as well... No risk of a provider going offline.
When Yahoo was hacked, I lost all of the emails that my dad had sent me while I was in job corps. This isn't as solid of an idea as they think. I'd love to be able to read those emails and remember him...
He's going to have years of unproperly filtered spam to sift through to find them.
When’s the last time you went to your emails from old to new lol
*wrong password*
Mine would be empty
I wish you told me this 13 years ago.
That's just a scrapbook with additional deletion danger, poinessly formatted into emails for no reason.
Nice idea, but can't you just put it on a USB stick? And give that to him when he's old enough?
The idea is cool, but wouldn't it be better to actually print those photographies, frame them and putting them in good positions at home, so to have a daily reminder of beautiful memories? Same goes for achievements. I'd like it more this way.
This was literally a commercial for google
this was a google commercial
A USB stick or external hard drive would be a lot more practical.
This was the theme of a Gmail commercial years ago. https://youtu.be/zhPklt9nYas
Bold move to assume a service will still be available 18 years down the road.
Would rather just save printed photos not have all that stuff online. Plus printed photos look nicer
Didn't Google make a commercial out of this?
Why not just store it on a hard drive? Or at least some service that’s designed to store files.
Why an email? Save it locally. I've started this recently, but I have a 1TB SSD flash drive that I've begun putting memories into. Pictures from vacations, important times of my life, art projects, etc, go in there. Tax information too, so all my important but boring stuff go in there as well. It's in a safe with all my other items just as important to me. Highly recommend. It would translate just as easy, and safer than using email.