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America Online Verizon Businesses Communications The Internet

Verizon.net 'Gets Out Of The Email Business' (networkworld.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the choice-is-ours dept.
"We have decided to close down our email business," Verizon has announced -- in a move which affects 4.5 million accounts. Slashdot reader tomservo84 writes: Strangely enough, I didn't find out about this from Verizon, itself, but SiriusXM, who sent me an email saying that since I have a Verizon.net email address on file, I'd have to update it because they were getting rid of their email service. I thought it was a bad phishing attempt at first...
Network World reports that customers are being notified "on a rolling basis... Once customers are notified, they are presented with a personal take-action date that is 30 days from the original notification." But even after that date, verizon.net email addresses can be revived using AOL Mail. "Over the years we've realized that there are more capable email platforms out there," Verizon concedes.

"Migration is going well," a Verizon spokesperson told Network World. "I don't have any stats to share, but customers seem to appreciate that they have several choices, including an option that keeps their Verizon.net email address intact."
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Verizon.net 'Gets Out Of The Email Business' More

Verizon.net 'Gets Out Of The Email Business'

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  • Email tie-in (Score:4, Informative)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @05:54PM (#54284305)

    The big problem is that for years, like, a LOT of years, you built your entire online existence on a single email address - and for many people that address was the one they got from their ISP.

    Forums, Facebook, online games, pretty much EVERYTHING ties into your email address. And you do know what happens if you want to change the email attached to an account, right?

    Yeah. They email the existing address on file to confirm. If you no longer have access to that address you're screwed.

    • That was true of everyone who didn't move
        If you moved and changed isps you quickly learned it was better to have an email address seperate from your isp. That is why you don't lock yourself into isp services

    • The big problem is that for years, like, a LOT of years, you built your entire online existence on a single email address - and for many people that address was the one they got from their ISP.

      Having been through a lot of ISP changes from the early 90s onward, I learned this lesson early. Fortunately, I have a permanent alumni address from one of the universities I attended. I've been forwarding that to whatever ISP or email provider I am currently using for 20-25 years now.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      I'm still using my 1995 email account for pretty much everything. It would be a massive PITA if I had to move it now.

    • and for many people that address was the one they got from their ISP.

      I'm curious how many people are still using their first ISP. Anybody have percentages?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by porges ( 58715 )

        I'm using my first ISP, sort of, except that it's been renamed more than once: it was mediaone, now I'm on comcast.net, and it was attbi.com at some point in between.

    • E-mail is the last service provided by ISPs since Verizon, like many others, no longer hosts web pages for their users. This could actually be a good thing. ISPs are reduced to providing connectivity and nothing else. Now, there is no reason to stick with a given ISP, and those that have choices where they live can shop around for their internet connection.

    • Worked support for a major tax software company in recent weeks and my particular specialty focused on people who had login issues.

      We generally authenticated by email address or phone number. If someone was locked out and still has access to the email address OR their phone, no problem. I could easily push a reset, after validating other info to ensure it was actually their account.

      But if they had changed emails and no longer had access to the email address, or changed phone numbers, the process was MUCH m

    • I tried to reset my "security question" once by having a temporary password sent to my email account. Immediately, my email client complained, Oops.

  • They OWN AOL, so they are not getting out of email (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Since their customers can migrate to AOL, and they own AOL, they are not getting out of the email business at all. They are just moving customers to a different division of Verizon. In fact, the verizon.net email addresses will work on aol servers, so they aren't even saving the cost of the .net domain! If anything, they are probably increasing their costs. Maybe they are getting ready to sell AOL, and want to show that AOL is growing?

  • Future of Yahoo Mail? (Score:3)

    by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @06:19PM (#54284401) Journal

    I wonder what the implications will be for Yahoo Mail once Verizon finishes acquiring Yahoo. Aside from @yahoo.com accounts, the Yahoo Mail platform powers most of the baby bells' ISP email. Mail for users @sbcglobal.net, @bellsouth.net, @pacbell.net, etc. is all part of the Yahoo Mail service whether the users realize it or not. I can't see Verizon being too benevolent about taking on "competing" ILEC/bell users' mail hosting. And if they were impressed with the Yahoo Mail platform, you'd think they would have waited and migrated their own users there instead of to AOL.

    What a tangled fucking web.

    • Verizon already hosted its own email on Yahoo's servers before the acquisition, and now Yahoo's reputation is in the toilet. They'll probably use this as practice for shutting down all of Yahoo mail. Or rebranding AOL mail as Yahoo mail - it's actually a decent little webmail now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      I wonder what the implications will be for Yahoo Mail once Verizon finishes acquiring Yahoo. Aside from @yahoo.com accounts,

      Well, in response to the Yahoo.com security breach, I already registered my own domain name and started
      migrating away from Gmail and Yahoo and using them only as a backup. I for one hope to be completely off of yahoo.com and gmail.com long before Verizon closes on their acquisition.

  • They can always cancel it, be bought out, or you could end up going with another ISP.

    Always get an email address on your own domain or a commercial one like iCloud or Gmail.

  • "Over the years we've realized that there are more capable email platforms out there," Verizon concedes.

    I love GMail and I am sure Google wouldn't be hurt acquiring all those accounts.

    My beef with GMail is in its "ugliness" by default, which makes one employ extensions to make it useful.

    I love the way Outlook is laid out. In order to have this layout in Gmail, I need to use some experimental add-on!

    Following an email thread is just too confusing. I am still learning how to use it myself...

    I find Gmail colors too "bland" for my liking and options provided are a gimmick in my opinion.

    Why can't I choose what lab

  • Customers... (Score:4, Informative)

    by mhkohne ( 3854 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @08:52PM (#54284859) Homepage

    Can keep their e-mail address, Verizon has just pushed the e-mail infrastructure over to AOL. I'm quite sure a lot of customers are confused but my 70 year old mother managed the transition on her own just fine. Apparently Verizon did provide instructions that were not lies.

    She did need help re-configuring her Android phone, but she got the rest done without any help.

    This is certainly annoying, but Verizon actually appeared to handle it reasonably, for once.

  • Hrumph (Score:3)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @10:46PM (#54285191) Homepage Journal

    I have an ansible scrip over in github that will do up to 2047 servers as a slum lord email hosting service that will handle over 16 million domain names with unlimited user accounts on various cloud services. (AWS, Azure, Google, Linode, Rackspace)

    Now I know why it suddenly got 20 downloads.

    I'm kidding of course. I do have such a playbook, but I only share it with folks I know are not spammers.

  • ISPs are only in the email business at all because they were the first to offer the service. Now that big national IMAP systems like Gmail have become the norm, ISPs would rather ditch their trouble-prone POP servers. Don't be that grandma who holds up the process by hanging onto that rickety old email address.

  • I have no idea why Verizon picked the corpse of a company like AOL, probably the lowest bidder for the email business. What is more important, Verizon now offers less service in their Internet package and therefore should charge less. So far they refuse. Do we really need to write to Lowell McAdam to make this point? What's next, can only view pages but not submit form data because others do it better? I went through the transition process and while it is not that difficult to do, they could have documented

  • uh-huh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What they said:
    "Over the years we've realized that there are more capable email platforms out there..."
    What they meant:
    "Over the years we've realized that this platform is not making enough money."

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