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

Posted by EditorDavid on 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."

9 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Email tie-in by Calydor · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    1. Re:Email tie-in by mars-nl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Get your own domain, create an email address, setup your own server (if you're a nerd) or else just redirect it to whatever webmail you're using these days.

    2. Re:Email tie-in by jandrese · · Score: 2

      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.

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      I read the internet for the articles.
    3. Re:Email tie-in by chihowa · · Score: 2

      If you can't handle running your own mailserver, point your domain MX records to a hosted service and let them handle it. Hosted mail for a single account is not expensive and if they hike the prices or start acting janky, then you just move to another service. You'll have all of the benefits of hosted email and the opportunity to keep your email address forever, typically for less than $10/month.

      My non-technical mother-in-law does this and if she ever needs to switch mail providers, she can ask me for help. She's done it once before by herself and it's not hard (there are tutorials on both the registrar's and the email providers' sites).

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
  2. They OWN AOL, so they are not getting out of email by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  3. Future of Yahoo Mail? by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
  4. Re:GMail to the rescue, only if Google would behav by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    Or... you could set up your Gmail account as an IMAP account in Outlook.

  5. Customers... by mhkohne · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
  6. Hrumph by buss_error · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.