this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023

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Australia’s internet providers are ditching email, to the disgust of older customers (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Err...

Users will keep their exisiting (sic) email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that.

So, what's the problem, exactly? Just take the ad-based free service. Gmail, Yahoo, etc. are ad-based free services too. Nobody is forcing them to change anything.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

People who use the default email their ISP gives them don't like change. The new service will probably have a different login screen and that's going to upset aunty Ethel and uncle ron. And then a different colour background. It's the worst thing that anyone could ever do to them

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can understand the pain, though. Moving accounts to a new email is not a fun process. Especially if someone has an email for years, decades even, that's a lot of stuff that could be registered with that email. And trying to save emails isn't necessarily straightforward. Migration, if it's even available, isn't foolproof or easy, either.

While I've grown up with the Internet, I think I've only changed my main email like 3 times over ~30yrs. The last time I did it was over a decade ago, to Gmail from my family's then ISP-based email. I think I'm way overdue to do it again, at least moving my important accounts like banking and government stuff to a new email address, but it's just so time consuming.

And I say all this as a tech person. I work in IT. For someone who's not particularly tech savvy, forget about it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

But they aren't getting forced to change accounts. Their service continues just under another provider.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm about the same. Last switch was yahoo to Gmail and now I'm in the process of switching from Gmail to Proton Mail. The most difficult part was the mental switch - which email you start giving out when you sign up. Second was migrating services. I made it a point for a while each time I logged into something knew I would switch the primary email. Its been a long process!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i am not a boomer and i am also pissed when firefox upgrade decides to unilaterally change the installed theme to something that looks like shit and i can't find the old one. so i kinda do understand aunty ethel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Visual Studio Code did this somewhat recently, but had the foresight to let you switch back to the old theme in a notification when first opening it after the update. I ended up sticking with the new theme since it was nice, but I know plenty of people who stuck with the old one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I used to see this a lot with Facebook. Every time they altered the design people would kick up a fuss and I never understood why, the new design always looked far better.

Nowadays of course I don't use Facebook but will occasionally have to sign in to look up the details of a business or something. The design has of course changed and I can't find a damn thing on it. So I'm finally on board with the masses.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Anyone who had a bookmark set to their webmail years ago will need a younger person to fix it. Same with anyone who had Outlook, Thunderbird, whatever configured for them will have to start using webmail. If someone doesn’t have younger family in the area they will be fucked. My own mother gets thrown way off by the slightest changes.

I’m not apologizing for boomers never investing in actually learning how computers work (for some, they’ve had decades of time). Just illustrating some of the hurdles.

My father was a mechanical engineer with fucking patents. I’m convinced he could have learned much more than he did. He just relinquished any notion that he could and that then played out. How many times did I tell him to click on the Apple menu only to have him ask (yet again), “What’s that?”

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I agree with the antiboomer sentiment.

But at the same time, it is annoying when you've had an included service for decades that will now be worse or cost money.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sure, but the core complaint of the article -- that folks are forced to changed ALL their e-mail based authentication to a new address -- is without merit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

An older family member of mine rang yesterday asking about what to do after they read the announcement.

I have been telling them for years to change to a proper provider but they weren't interested. I told them this would eventually happen, but the change wasnt worth the hassle for them.

Now the change is forced and its just increased the stress.

Im hoping the prospect of only being a year for free then ad based means I can just get them onto fastmail or something that I can administer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My GM still uses @aol.com. I have no idea how he accesses it and at this point I'm afraid to ask.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably at www aol.com?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, my mom has been using AOL.com since the 90s. When the dedicated client went away, I pointed her at mail.aol.com and she was fine. She's still using it today.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

YSK: Aunty Ethel isn't with Uncle Ron anymore. She's with Herman now. They fell out over her planting sunflowers in the yard instead of begonias. Ron smashed her garden gnome in anger and that was it for them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes and it's fun getting Windows Live Mail 2012 to keep working at the best of times.

Every year or so, have to add these registry entries to revive it

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail]
"RecreateFolderIndex"=dword:00000001
"RecreateStreamIndex"=dword:00000001
"RecreateUIDLIndex"=dword:00000001

They'd prefer Outlook Express.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

For everyone's sake it might be best to refuse to support the application because of the security risks with such an outdated program.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem, presumably is that they will be canning IMAP/POP/SMTP and will be implementing a sucky web-only interface

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wtf, that's evil

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of places no longer have staff that understand email systems or routing.

Even technically-inclined Universities like Purdue have abandoned their on-campus email systems and now rely upon Office365 and GMail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fair enough

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Whilst I agree and sympathise with people on how difficult it is to change your primary email address (been there), the outcome will be better for them. They are no longer wedded to an ISP purely because all their mail goes there.

To liken it to something more tangible; when you move house, you need to change your mailing address. For renters, that can be often and is just as painful. Or when your phone number changes and you have to update your contacts. The difference here is who is pulling the trigger; the end user vs the provider.

Gmail is a great option, as is Proton Mail for the security conscious and tech savvy.

This isn’t to excuse the ISPs; it’s a shitty move on their part and the people using these mail accounts will likely be older technically challenged folks, but it is a logical one from a technical perspective. They may have also inadvertently taken the only thing away that’s creating stickiness between them and their customer and driven them into the arms of another ISP.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gmail is a great option

after you spend two paragraphs explaining how it is inconvinient to depend on someone who can change anything at their will, your conclusion is to move to google? 🤣

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well it’s just an example of course 😂 but to be fair, mail is the core business of Gmail.

Mail is a value-add for ISPs. You could argue any mail provider could up and change things and the only true way to get around that is hosting your own mail server, but I was trying to be semi-realistic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

core bussines for google is harvesting your data and sell them, having a mail is just one of neccesary tools to achieve that goal ;)

if anything, my advice in such situation would be get your own domain. after that, if you decide to host it on google (i would not recommend it, but it is your life) you are no longer their prisoner, because you can get up and leave at any time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Can’t argue with you there :P but I guess what I mean is from a service standpoint, Gmail is mail, ISPs provide internet.

For me personally, Google is not my friend and I run my own mail server on my own domain and have for years. It’s quite involved though if you want good deliverability.

I think Proton is probably the happiest medium between privacy-respecting and all-out DIY mail server. Though I’m sure there are many others too :)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Plus one for Proton.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Proton isnt great for oldies. You cant use default email apps and the like without a bridge, and last I checked they arent available for mobile or Chromebooks, which means they would have to use the first party app. Thats just another change thats not worth it for oldies who dont like change.

Also migrating away from protonmail is a nightmare. You cant when set a "forward all" rule.

I admire protons ethos, but the UX sucks.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm old and found the mail, vpn, drive and proton pass fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're also on lemmy. You might be old, but you are also technically literate. Im not saying PM is bad, I used it myself for ages until I decided to set up my own domain for business reasons so moved to fastmail.

Its just for the type of oldies who use ISP provided mail dont like the change of leaving the ios default mail app to go to the protonmail app

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Now if the USPS could just figure out a virtual address system we'd be golden.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Didn't even know this was a service to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was the main introduction to email for a lot of Australians, they've been using it as is for 15-20 years.

It's more than just one generation that uses it, I know people in their thirties who use theirs via the Gmail app as with any long-term email their is no need to change address.

I remember only signing up to Gmail because it felt new and techy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hey, that's why I set up a Gmail, too! Hahahaha

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It used to be quite a big deal, back in the day. The other day I read a really old thread on some local forum here in NL, and it said that you couldn't sign up with an "anonymous" email address, such as hotmail or gmail. Only provider-issued email addresses were accepted there so "they had an idea who they were dealing with". Times really did change a lot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

Simon too says he is not happy about the sudden shift, describing the move as “shrinkflation” given the change didn’t come with a reduction in his internet bill.

Even Google appears to be feeling the pinch, messaging its customers in recent weeks saying that accounts deemed inactive in the past two years could be deleted beginning 1 December 2023.

Legacy systems, particularly those managed under a variety of absorbed companies, as with TPG, can over time become more at risk of a cybersecurity attack or breach.

Randall Cameron, the director of sales and marketing at AtMail, the parent firm of the Messaging Company, says there’s been a good opt-in rate for users wanting to keep their existing email addresses so far.

While the company did not answer questions on how many still remained seven years after it stopped offering new accounts, the chief executive, Vicki Brady, said they were still very active.

With the rise in data breaches, and the avalanche of spam and scams, the shift offers people the opportunity of a clean email slate, according to Andrew Williams, of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Saved 83% of original text.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Also happening in the UK.