Leaving one ISP for another - emails and transferring?

[Matthew]

Looks like we'll be leaving ATT for Google Fiber and cutting the cord.

We've had ATT/Southwestern Bell/SBC Global for decades, and our email has been with them pretty much forever.

I have an sbcglobal.net and associated yahoo.com alias addresses. When we leave ATT, any ideas on what happens to those addresses? I *think* I can keep them, but I get some confusing info on sub-accounts (main account can have several sub-account email addresses).

Any info on best way to handle all this so we don't lose either archived emails or the ability to still use those addresses?

 

[denverpilot]

Most ISPs kill addresses when you leave unless you pay them (the few that’ll do it).

Quick google search seems to indicate that AT&T uses Yahoo for their mail servers or something silly? Not even going to try to figure that stupidity out.

Also seems to indicate that as long as your account is “in good standing” when you leave they’ll leave the email active and you can log into it and use it but you lose ALL support for it. If it breaks or you lock yourself out of it, you’re done.

I wouldn’t trust it. I’d turn on IMAP and move all of it from their server to the new one with my mail client. But I also wouldn’t ever use the ISPs domain anyway. I’d take the opportunity to register a domain that was mine and then put it on my or a real mail vendor’s servers so the domain can always be my address.

Fastmail.fm - highly recommended. They do a great job. Or choose one of the monster email companies and their domain hosting services.

There’s a reason GMail accounts are so popular. People think Google will never go away or change their free tier terms of service.

(By the way, do NOT get a domain and put it in Google Workspaces. Huge numbers of features available to free Gmail accounts are not available to GSuite/Workspaces accounts AND if you do anything with the Google Play store that domain is forever locked to Google unless you want to repurchase all android apps when you eventually leave them. Things like family pricing are unavailable, etc etc etc. GSuite for anything other than a business that will never leave, is a disaster. Don’t do it.)

 

[Palmpilot]

Looks like we'll be leaving ATT for Google Fiber and cutting the cord.

We've had ATT/Southwestern Bell/SBC Global for decades, and our email has been with them pretty much forever.

I have an sbcglobal.net and associated yahoo.com alias addresses. When we leave ATT, any ideas on what happens to those addresses? I *think* I can keep them, but I get some confusing info on sub-accounts (main account can have several sub-account email addresses).

Any info on best way to handle all this so we don't lose either archived emails or the ability to still use those addresses?

At some point after a competitor bought Yahoo, AT&T made a change that IIRC made my AT&T account independent from my Yahoo email address. I think that means that my Yahoo email address will persist regardless of what happens to AT&T, and vice versa. (I had the Yahoo email address before AT&T merged with my ISP, and I had opted to join it to my ISP before that merger. Now they're separate again.)

 

[keen9]

My sbcglobal.net email address took forever to die trying to get them to kill it. I think it is finally gone, but I don't check it.
So, they will not shut it down. Your email account is associated, but separate from ATT ISP.

 

[Matthew]

I have an sbcglobal.net address with a number of yahoo aliases that I use that are tied to that sbcglobal account.

 

[Dana]

Apparently Comcast, too, lets former customers continue to use their comcast.net email. Not sure why they'd do that or what would happen if they changed their mind... might it be some government requirement?

 

[airdale]

As a long-term strategy I suggest you consider what we did years ago. We bought our own domain, like ourdomain.net, and all our emails go there. It can be hosted by any ISP and mail service, spam filtering, etc. provided. The ISP that does this for us was also our internet ISP but that has not been true for years. I think their charge is $25 per year to host the domain and like ten bucks a month for the email service/two addresses.

 

[wsuffa]

In addition to Nate's recommendation, I can also say the ProtonMail does a good job, too. And it offered secure mails, something the others don't.

 

[denverpilot]

Apparently Comcast, too, lets former customers continue to use their comcast.net email. Not sure why they'd do that or what would happen if they changed their mind... might it be some government requirement?

Don’t think so. They’re all just data mining it for their “marketing partners”.

Keeping it flowing thru their servers after you are no longer a paying customer benefits them monetarily and also removes any perception they could damage you in such a way as they could be sued... “well it’s free Your Honor, nobody has to use it... there was verbiage about our partner programs and an opt out buried ten menu layers deep when they were a customer, but the free service comes with no settings or support”.

Same model as Google’s free tier.

 

[denverpilot]

In addition to Nate's recommendation, I can also say the ProtonMail does a good job, too. And it offered secure mails, something the others don't.

Yeah I avoid recommending Proton since people who know they need it, already know they do. The user interfaces aren’t as friendly as traditional e-mail... doing their whole encrypted gateway thing to use standard email clients is a turn off for many.

And of course once it leaves proton for any other standard mail server all the benefits of their secure transport are lost.

E-mail is not a secure medium. Shouldn’t be used for a huge number of things it’s used for. Not designed correctly for those jobs. But whatcha gonna do?

 

[wsuffa]

Yeah I avoid recommending Proton since people who know they need it, already know they do. The user interfaces aren’t as friendly as traditional e-mail... doing their whole encrypted gateway thing to use standard email clients is a turn off for many.

It's improved since I've been using it. Most of the time I'm using it via the phone app, so I'm not using the desktop client add-on. They've added calendar now, which is a plus. And the VPN. IIRC, they're adding files storage, too.

And of course once it leaves proton for any other standard mail server all the benefits of their secure transport are lost.

E-mail is not a secure medium. Shouldn’t be used for a huge number of things it’s used for. Not designed correctly for those jobs. But whatcha gonna do?

Concur, but you do have the option to make the recipient read on the web interface if it the message needs to be secure.

At least they aren't mining the data.