How To Check When An Email Address Was Created

Having an email address has become an important part of our day to life. Be it for social media, for work, or entertainment, you will always be required to enter an email ID. One of the most popular email service providers is Google's Gmail. Everyone has got a Gmail account. Since 2004, the birth of Gmail, there have been millions of accounts being created. And if you are one of those who created a Gmail account long back, then you might want to know its creation date or for that matter someone else's Gmail account creation date. This guide will show you how to find out when a Gmail account was created.

Many online platforms show you when a person has joined or created an account. With such information available you have an idea of whether an account was made to be used normally or just freshly created to be used as a fake or a spam account. Sometimes just having the information of when you created an account kind of feels good and makes you look back at how many years you have been using the particular service. Read along to know how to find someone's Gmail account creation date.

Find when someone's Gmail account was created

So, can you find the account creation date for someone's Gmail account? The answer is no. You just simply can't do that. Also, that information is not publicly available to anyone. Unless you have access to that person's Gmail account and have permission to go through the account information, only then you can find that information. Otherwise, there is no way whatsoever to look for a person's account creation date.

There might be some apps and websites that claim to get such information by adding the person's email address. These don't work and will simply result in spam mail being sent to a particular email address. Stay away from such services that claim to get this kind of information.

Find your Gmail account creation date

Since you won't be able to find someone else's account creation date in Gmail, you can find yours. There are a few ways that you can use to find when your Gmail account was created. Let's get started

Look for the Welcome message

When you create a new Gmail account, you will receive the first email from the Google Community team which will talk about various features and the benefits of using Gmail. On the right side of the Gmail screen, you will see an email count that might display as 1-500 or something similar to it. Simply click on it and select Oldest. You will now be able to see emails from the day you created your account and will also spot the Welcome Email as well. This works only if you haven't deleted the Welcome Email. If you don't have the welcome mail, the next method might workaround for you to find when your Gmail account was created.

How to find out when Gmail account was created

Check POP/IMAP settings

Login to your Gmail account in a web browser on a laptop or a Desktop.
Click on the Settings (gear icon) that is placed to the left of your Profile Picture.
Once you have clicked on the Settings, select See all Settings.
Or, if you already have your Gmail account logged in, simply click here to visit your account's settings page.
Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Now, look at the POP Download section.
Next to the radio button that reads Enable POP for all mail, you should be able to see the date.

However, if you have never made changes to your POP/IMAP download settings and don't have any of the radio buttons selected, you will then not be able to see any kind of date as it is in my case. Also, you will have to keep in mind that you might see the date as to when you changed the POP & IMAP settings, and in such cases, it will not be the account creation date. Rather, it will be the date when you changed the particular setting.

Check join date on YouTube

Now, when you create a Google account, you will already be signed in to many other services of Google such as YouTube, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and other services. Now, there is a way for you to see when you created your Google account but it will only show you the year that you joined YouTube, which is also the same year that you created an account on Google.

Using your favorite web browser, log in to YouTube. Make sure to sign in with the Gmail account that you wish to check the creation date.
Once signed in, simply click on your profile picture to bring a drop-down menu.
Click on the Your Channel option.
On the channel screen, simply click on the About tab.
Under the stats, you will see the Joined date. Sometimes, it may not be right and you might only see the year of joining.

Now, of course, this may not be right all the time, given that YouTube's counting system just simply doesn't work right and takes a lot of time to get updated when it comes to the view count on videos. However, there is another method that might show you all details and possibly even the time that you created the account.

Use Google API to check the account creation date

This is the last and one of the best methods to use if the above methods didn't work quite right for you. This method involves making use of Google's APIs to fetch the necessary account details such as the creation date and even possibly the time it was created as well. Here is how you can check when Gmail account was created.

First things first, head over to the Google API Explorer page by clicking here.
You will now be greeted with a window. Make sure to mark Google Auth 2.0 and the API key check boxes.
Click on the blue Execute button on your left after selecting both check boxes.
Now sign in or select the desired Google account.
Google API Explorer will now ask for your permission to access your Google account. Click on the blue Allow button.
Now, simply scroll down a bit till you see the created Time option. You will see the date and time of when the account was created. The date format goes as YYYY-MM-DD followed by the time which is displayed in the 24-hour format that includes the seconds as well as the milliseconds.

And this is how you can check when your Gmail account was created with a few simple methods. Why would you want to know this particular information? Well sometimes if you get locked out of your Google account, and want to recover it, Google will ask you for information such as the date you created the account.

Another way to check the date is by using the Google Takeout service. It helps you to export all you to export your data from Google in various formats. This method used to work when Google+ was still around. Now that Google+ has been killed, this method no longer works, Let's just also hope that Google doesn't kill off access to the Google API Explorer page to the general public as there will be no other proper way to find out the account creation date.

So that's all on how to check when a Gmail was created. In case if you have any queries, let us know in the comment section.

Also Check:

How to Recall Sent Emails on Gmail
How to Install Add-ons in Gmail
How to Sign Out from Gmail Account from any Device

Joshua D'souza

Enjoys games, 90's hip-hop, and tech. Loves exploring the infinite world of laptops and food. Every ready to provide assistance in anything that rocks his boat. Will gladly enjoy capturing memories through various lenses. Worked previously at PiunikaWeb as an author and researcher.