Bitcoin Forum

I know I am one of MANY people who just lost track of their Bitcoin from way back, you know, it wasn't worth much then, and life got busy.... So, starting in about 2017 I started looking for my Bitcoin, and lost hope, but here I am back at it again. So, I do apologize for being one of "those" people asking for help!

I mined back in the early days.... I didn't mine for long, just off and on from mid to late 2009, to about late 2010, but honestly though, I am not sure on exact time frame, because it was so long ago. With that being said, I also received a few payments using Bitcoin between 2010, and late 2011, for services provided.... In total I have, well, LOTS of Bitcoin. I hate to speculate, but, I would say thousands.

I am 95% sure that what I need is on one of my old computers (I kept most of them). I had most everything in the old AOL email, and I have been unable to access it. I can login to a couple of my aol accounts through mail.aol.com, BUT, it doesn't have all of my email/archives/saved folders, et. cetera! It just has from 2015 til current. I am missing about 15 years worth of stuff, most importantly, my Bitcoin info.

Does anyone here know how to retrieve email files from aol? Just to reiterate, I do have access to the computers, and laptops.....

Thank you,
Dee :-)

 Hi I would try searching your old computer browser history you can go into browser settings to find it. Also search for wallet files or bitcoin core program. Did you have a wallet or was it online wallet when you store coins? Hope i could help you. If you need help you can pm me if you like.

Do you remember what bitcoin wallet did you use? there you could have an idea of what you're looking for in your computer assuming it was never get reformatted in that time frame. But assuming that you have it around 2011, bitcoin core is the only wallet I've known that exist such date.

Try to search "wallet", "bitcoin", "bitcoin-qt", "blocks" on your computer from all drives.

What data/file did you save on your email? You sure it was never got hacked ever since? How about if you remember one of your wallet address used before and check it on blockchair.com if the bitcoin you had is still there?

Hope you get it back, but it may be a bit difficult considering.
Was it blockchain?
Customer service is usually really cold, esp if you didn't verify with ID before.

Try to look again on AOL, if you still have access, and look for Achive folder, the very old mails may be there.
Of course, you can also ask their support without mentioning Bitcoin, but if they get too curious and your info is not encrypted / password-protected they may help themselves...
Google about recovering old AOL mails.

Also one copy of those mails could be locally, but I don't know if, how and by what rules. Maybe it would not hurt to make a clone all those old computers' HDDs and keep one set of copies untouched, or at least not use for a while those HDDs. And of course, start digging for whatever could be useful - maybe wallet.dat files, maybe zip or rar files in case you archived them, pool info (slush?) and of course old mails saved in whatever form.

PS. If you talk about thousands of Bitcoin, I an surprised that you ignored them in 2014 and 2017...

Do you recon you have the email folders saved on the old HD's?
I assume you cannot access the computers so what about trying to
recover the data from the HD's on a newer PC, I know this sounds
obvious.

Maybe somehow on the old PC's there are logins to older AOL accounts

What steps did you take in 2017 to recover the info?

I can only sympathize with you... Maybe someday they will come up with a way to restore that will help you, but as I understand it now there is no such way...

If you do have the access to your computer then I do believe that you should be able to retrieve them without any problems but the thing is it would be an extremely hard Task and someone who does have a lot of experience in doing the same is the only one who can help you with this. You can try and ask for tech support just don't leave your laptop there. Lol
The only thing that can save you is if you remember the password, the address of the coins , there is also something called the **keys** you have to make sure to see what you do have with yourself and maybe you wrote down that information somewhere? That would be the hardest part for sure.
Rest best of luck I hope you are able to find what you are looking for.
Rest there are many people who are facing the similar situation. The guy who lost his access to laptop is now paying in millions to retrieve the hard drive so that he can try and get the address from there. But you have it ! That means you are at a better place already.

Wait, you say you need to login into your email account, did you save your credential in your email account and not in your old computer? If you do not save it, I think you can not recover your email account because as far as I know if someone is login his email account for at least 6 months, his email account will be deleted. But he can try to recover his email by using a secondary email added into the primary account.

Maybe you need to search for your old computers about all of them, so it could be a clear sign to find your bitcoin address with all of the credential files, including your password.

Let's assume that there's a restore point from those years, you can try to go back on that time through system restore but you have to make one first for the current time so you can revert it back to present time.

But if that doesn't help, you can ask this question on aol's support if there's a way doing that. I've tried checking my email from a different provider and I got the same situation as you, I can no longer see the old files/folders saved and emails I've received since 2010.

... and OP is gone  ;D.

Anyway, have you tried recovering deleted files on that HDD?  There is a possibility that the traces of files you uploaded on that AOL is still lingering on those sectors of your HDD.  I just hope that the sector holding those important files was not overwritten by other files that can cause errors (corrupted files) when retrieving them. 

try to find in old backups if you have them, if not try to find a recovery tool that can scan hard disk blocks and as some users mention find key words as "wallet", "bitcoin", "bt" and so on.

Good luck!

This is clear if I'm not mistaken I have read this thread in another section where bitcoins have also been lost, but it's different from this OP. because he still keeps it in his computer's email address which may hopefully be opened in a file that might be able to be returned again. although it might also not be easy because it's been too long and there are so many changes besides, actually registering another email address to fix the password. maybe you can ask for a change in the password which you might forget, but if the repair email address is also forgotten, you have no other way to check maybe there are files left on the computer.

I agree with you that why is the OP just making a fuss now, why when there was an increase in 2013 it was not surprising, or it could be because it wasn't big yet and it was not surprising. but before the 2017 increase, hackers were already hacking into many companies and asking for payment using bitcoin, whether you don't know either. why did it take so long to wake up and was surprised. I hope it works

I have access to some of my old computers, hopefully the right ones. To be honest it's a crap shoot, but, I gotta try. I do not know if the email folders were saved on my HD.... like I said, when I login to mail.aol.com, it shows only email from 2015 til current. I lost literally 15 years of emails/files/folders.

A couple of years ago, I tried logging on to aol via AOL Desktop program, and it is no longer working/functional. They discontinued it.

The only steps I took in 2017 to recover the info was just trying to log on to my old email accounts, and did quick scans looking for certain keywords, such as bitcoin, bitcoin core, bitcoin-qt, wallet, et. cetera.

I am just needing to figure out if all of my old emails are still accessible. :-(


Dee

Honestly, the reason I started looking in 2017 instead of 2013 is for a number of reasons.
Like I said originally, life got crazy/busy. My husband and I divorced, I was working on a degree, got remarried, had a kid.... just lots of things going on. I did not think about Bitcoin again until years later.

No, I am here. Just a busy mom lol. I have not tried recovering deleted files. That is something I will be trying to do! I consider myself pretty computer savvy, BUT, I have a lot to learn about more advanced stuff.... such as recovering deleted files. My husband suggested taking my old computers to someone with more experience, but, that makes me incredibly nervous, for obvious reasons ha!

Dee

Yes, there are a number of people that I have heard about that are in a similar situation. It sucks, but, it is what it is. Hopefully it works out for those of us in this crappy position.

Dee

May I know what Bitcoin wallet that you have been used?
In your old computer, the file should be there and once you have your private key you can recover your Bitcoin.  I suggest if you are taking your old computer with someone else make sure that you know this person because that might a pretty big amount, once it will recover, it might not tell you.

If you have access to your AOL account, you might remember what wallet you have used.  It should have a message in your inbox as a confirmation from the wallet that you have stored Bitcoin.

Edited:  Hey sis, just a quick reminder, your post above of mine is against forum rules.

Just edit and make one reply.

Yeah, it does sound surprising, but, life got turned upside down for a few years....

I contacted AOL tech support, and they said that they will try to help me recover all of my old emails/files, of course, I DID NOT mention Bitcoin lol. I will let you know if it works!

Sheenshane - I did not realize multiple replies were not allowed. I will not do that going forward. Thank you for letting me know!

Dee

Forget about AOL ... Unless you kept your coin at an online exchange, old emails will not help you find your lost coins.  You might find an address, but what you need it your private key.  Your best bet it to find the computer or hard drive you use to do the mining.  Search the entire harddrive for wallet.dat files.  If you find old harddrives, USB thumbs, CDRs you may have burned backups on, stick them in your computer, search the entire drive for wallet.dat files.  

Since I've never used AOL mail, so it can't be of much help. But one thing that can be a lesson for you and me is not to keep all valuable information
in one place, we do have to have a back up regarding where valuable information is stored. So one day there is a problem with the computer or mail
that we usually use, then we have alternative storage elsewhere.

"had most everything in the old AOL email"

What do you mean by this?  Do you mean that you had opened bitcoin and copied the private keys and then placed them into your aol email?  What OS were you running in 2009 and 2010 while mining?  Linux, windows, Mac?

Just trying to figure out the best way to help, but the emphasis on looking at old email instead of the wallet.dat files is confusing.

why the emphasis on email? if you physically have the computers you believe the wallet files are on, you should be searching those for your wallet.dat file.

are you sure we're talking about a local bitcoin wallet (on your PC) and not an account with a third party website?

I hope that the OP can receive the information you provided, if indeed it is a matter of a wallet that has indeed forgotten the computer and in fact, if there is still a computer, it can be traced properly. but it looks like the OP only emphasizes on the email address nothing has been done to find the wallet.dat file which may still be stored properly and not overwritten by another wallet.dat file or could catch a virus.

but it is also true whether this is only a matter of a wallet that is not on the computer or as your explanation is indeed related to a third party. if with a third party maybe there is no other way to fix it and be able to find out the email address.

We hope of course it can be resolved well and of course this is quite a lot of assets, but why does the OP only realize that this year is not 2013 or 2017 which may be relatively early.

It is kinda frustrating for the part of those people who have mined Bitcoins way back then having a hard time to regain access on those after a long time maybe due to busy schedule or they have already made forgotten because of many happenings that occur for the past years and now they are wanting to recover those stocked Bitcoins all due because they will be the ones to get benefited once they have been able to recover those Bitcoins because of the current value that it have compared to the value it have when it was first mined or purchased. Sadly some of those lost Bitcoins may or may not be recover at all due to lots of reasons like having no access on the computer already or even on the email and the wallet he have used. But I do still hope like OP,  they can still be able to regain access on their wallets and recover their Bitcoin.