Joint e-mail address and social media accounts

[dowie]

Does anyone on here have a joint e-mail or social media account? Why do people do this?

Is it some middle aged thing? Like perhaps when a middle aged couple have just got the internet and treat their e-mail address just as they would their postal address or something?

I know the likes of Facebook don't allow it (though people still apparently do it on there).

Is it some sort of virtue signalling on the part of one of the partners "look I'm totally open I have nothing to hide" etc.. or is it perhaps because one partner doesn't trust the other?

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Is it some middle aged thing? Like perhaps when a middle aged couple have just got the internet and treat their e-mail address just as they would their postal address or something?

Yes.

 

[Scam]

My girlfriend's sister set up a Hotmail and Facebook account for their parents a few years ago (they're pensioners), but on FB their name is "<Mum's-name> <Dad's-name> Olds" ..argh! Being a southerner I'd never even heard of calling your parents "the olds" but every time I see it, it makes me angry!

 

[Josh]

I always play guess the cheat when I see a joint FB account.

Cynical git that I am.

 

[d_brennen]

I always play guess the cheat when I see a joint FB account.

Cynical git that I am.

Swingers the third option?

 

[bJN]

My mum and step dad have had a joint email for years, more because they're technologically incompetent than anything else. That is until they upgraded their phones and I've forced them to use (new) private email addresses.

 

[JaWalks]

When a couple who previously had their own Facebook profiles suddenly decide to have a shared one you know it's down to lack of trust.

 

[BowdonUK]

It always makes me laugh when a joint account will appear on facebook, they will friend everyone on each others friends lists, and be posting pictures of them together all over the account. Then it'll go quiet for a few weeks and suddenly I get a friends request from the friends old single account and hear they broke up. It happens a lot.

People do it offline too. They will be all over each other, even when I'm trying to have a normal conversation. Like they are "together forever", then a few months later they have split up and never talk to each other again.

 

[Dup]

Joint emails are a GDPR nightmare when it comes to online user accounts. Joint Facebook is just cringe and screams control & distrust.

 

[HangTime]

My aunt and uncle have a joint email address, although they might have other personal ones as well for all I know. I think it just whatever they set themselves up with when they got broadband, makes sense to me, shared broadband account so shared email that comes with it. They aren't / weren't particularly tech savvy / interested in tech, when the digital switchover happened I had to go round and setup their TV etc.

The thing we have to realise is everyone on this forum is implicitly a nerd in relative terms, because we are on a niche internet forum. So we think of email accounts as almost an essential part of life for registered to various services and whatnot. But 15 years ago or whenever these accounts were setup, for these type of people, accessing the internet might be something you did once a day if that, not every hour. Don't forget back in the day it was actually more common for websites to have a username that was distinct from the email address associated with it, and for a lot of things you didn't even technically need an active email account.

I seriously doubt it is a trust issue, but you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

 

[Rroff]

Seems 50/50 in my experience - some older people or those who either created accounts or had accounts created for them like 10 years back when a lot of this stuff was less mainstream have accounts like that but for others it definitely tells you something about their relationship :s