A long time ago, back when EverQuest was a free (mostly text chat) game on AOL, I signed up for an AOL account. In 1996, everyone used AOL. If you wanted to communicate with people online, AOL was the method of choice. In fact, I got my first website client using AOL Instant Messaging.
Unfortunately, for me, I didn’t maintain my AOL account, and lost my username of choice: ephealy.
Here I am, more than a decade later, and I’d like to re-secure my old username. Every time I sign up for a new site or service, I use the same username: ephealy. But, when it comes to AOL/AIM, I can’t. After all this time, AOL still has my old, now defunct, screen name in their database. What more, I can’t figure out how to get in touch with them so I can recover it. As far as I can tell, they want you to use an automated service, but that service can only recover accounts that have lapsed for less than six months.
So, I’m stuck. But, I am holding out hope that (some day) I can recover the first username I ever had.
If you happen to know how I can recover my old account, please let me know.