Slashdot Mirror
Customer's 20-Year-Old Email Account Shut Down Over Unusual Address (www.cbc.ca)
A Halifax man is facing the daunting task of going through almost two decades of email messages after his email provider served notice it was deactivating his account in 30 days because of his email address: noreply@eastlink.ca. From a report: "I had it since the late '90s, probably 1998 when I really started getting online," Steve Morshead told CBC News. "I asked for it, it was available and they gave it to me without hesitation." He said he picked the handle "noreply" because he wanted an unusual address -- and back in the '90s, it was. Morshead never expected to lose his email address, which he uses for communicating with everyone from friends to banks to lawyers. He is in the process of selling his home and says this couldn't come at a worse time. "My email address is a personal identifier for banks, eBay, Kijiji, and hundreds of other places I've logged into -- so many I can't count," Morshead said. He said he wouldn't be in this situation if Eastlink had addressed the issue when he applied for the email. "Now, after all these years, 20 years almost, I find it reprehensible they want to pop out of bushes and just give me 30 days to go through 20 years worth of emails and decide what I want to keep," he said. Morshead said he was given 30 days notice on June 7 that he would lose access to his email address and all of his emails.
Wait until Yahoo! mail shuts down. So many website accounts will be toast
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
what an email packrat, reminds me of those hoarders that fill their house from wall to wall & floor to ceiling with every piece of junk they find even if they have no use for it or just a piece of junk,
i dont keep email longer than a week or two, when i am finished with it i delete it,
Windows came and I started using Forte Agent at .98 and I've used nothing else, I've been using that program when or before running Win98 Or NT/W2K, and keeping my Emal for some odd reason. I have that email from 1998 and almost every one received as well as all i sent out . I can't really explain why unless it's an example of never having to install Agent other than that first time after it's pulling an Icon to the desktop (Agent installed on Drive D).
Maybe keeping them was because of (forget hierarchy Alt.~.Microsoft.nt.misc (?) that was one fun times on Usenet, very helpful group. Just a bunch of users given a new OS and sharing tips and tricks with each other. (Microsoft sent anyone who asked NT - having a Win95 client/Outlook server/ Exchange Server/SP2 - being important we all had it within two days hot rush (I had asked many months earlier)) Nobody above the others and it was all about shareing, tricks I learned at that time I still use to this day - the who cares type: a selection isn't selected until you release the mouse key - the open a clear run command 15 paths in grab a file and drop it in the run command you will have the entire path to file (I use this one a lot and was told of it way back then.
Whatever the reason (the above was reminiscing that hated to quit. I have them all, one would think it a huge security risk legal as well as personal if all are stolen. Not what I post or email about :) drives have been imaged by one looking to screw me :) nothing came about it.
True facts. 1998 Email upon request, headers only if of a personal nature.
Could you maybe elaborate on why that pissed them off?
david, david2, david3, david4, da5id...wtf?! who does this noob think he is?!
Also, why does it matter if he's a graphic artist?
Programmers thought the graphic artists were a bunch of assholes. Graphic artists thought the programmers were a bunch of assholes. I managed to gain the respect of both teams from my hard work as the intern.
originally my login here was @10u8 until that stopped letting me login because suddenly the slashdot id became an e-mail address and the new code would not tolerate my old id
Email addresses have almost become the equivalent of a physical address. All your bills can come to it,all your correspondence, almost every business asks for it, some even require it. This has been encouraged by internet providers in a sense (they'll want your email address too). I wouldn't be surprised t learn that there is significance legally in contracts and other agreements.
So now you have people who have setup much of their life around an email address in pretty much the same way they've done with their physical address and it has become an integral part of their life and business.
Forcing a user to relinquish an address for whatever reason is kind of like a city renaming your street or changing your house number. I wonder what that does to legal devices such as mortgages, etc. Is mail still delivered or does it come back as invalid address? How long does it take for the address change to percolate it's way through the system? Will SWAT show up at the wrong house (again)? Will emergency services not find your place?
I bet some lawyer could make a go at this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.