AOL has been in the email business since 1985, so it’s no surprise that the company keeps old mail for a long time. AOL says that it stores user mail for “a minimum of five years and up to 20 years.” ..
Turn Logging Off To see how long it takes for AOL to purge your email messages you’ll want to turn off the logging feature. This lets you check and see if the mail is still there before you switch back on logging. Here’s how to do this: Select “Options” from the main menu. Then click on “Preferences”. Make sure that “Enable logs” is turned off (it will be gray). Click “OK”. Go ahead and log onto your email account normally. (This is so you can still see the AOL Mail folders.) Check your mail by using the main menu to go to “View”, then “New messages”. You should see a message from AOL letting you know that logging is now turned off. Click on “OK”.
Click on “Options” again and click Preferences. Make sure that logging is still turned off. If it isn’t, click it again until it stays gray (it will be gray). Click OK . Log out of your email account with “File”, then clicking on “Sign out”. Use the login screen to log back in. Now just browse around through the folders to look at the old messages and files. Check the time and date stamp on each mail.
It’s a good idea to check this every few months just in case you accidentally turn logging on again and discover that AOL is deleting your old emails without warning. If you notice that AOL starts deleting your data, you’ll need to switch logging off again and contact AOL because it’s a very serious problem that could result in losing important data.
You can also use this method to check if someone is snooping around your email account without gaining access by turning off the logging feature and then seeing if any messages or new activity has appeared while you were away from the account. Sometimes AOL will send notices about special promotions when there are none. If you’re not interested in these offers, just delete them. Otherwise, go into Options/Preferences and turn logging back on so you can get the notifications again next time.
An AOL client is a program that you use to access the AOL service, such as AOL Mail and Instant Messenger (IM). The client program is what lets you log onto your account when you’re away from home. Just about any computer under the sun has an email client of some sort that will let you access your AOL mail. You could even use a mobile phone or PDA to do this if there’s a wireless connection available nearby. Browsing Through Old Email Messages Sometimes I like to go through old email messages just because I enjoy reading them over again sometimes.
