28 July 2021

You'd Think

I use Thunderbird to retrieve my email from the server.  I have several email accounts to manage.

On the 12th... that stopped working.

This is because I used to have Verizon FIOS.  When that became Frontier FIOS, Verizon punted my main email account over to AOL.

AOL, with no notice, changed their security protocol and my login quit.

They took two weeks to put out the work-around for people who want to use something besides their browser to get their email.  I only know about the work-around because I submitted a suggestion to fix the problem.

Note I didn't report the problem to AOL.  They have a message on their help landing page that says reporting by email is down because of COVID.

You'd think that a company that's primarily centered on email would have an email option...

7 comments:

  1. Wait... AOHelL is still in bidness? Yikes.

    And, yes, not being able to report via email. That's like the internet providers who only have internet customer service help systems, which are totally useless if you can't connect to the... internet.

    Or other services that won't let you get in touch with customer service until you get past the login portion. And one of the biggest issues those services have is... the logins. IRS and Social Security and other government agencies are very bad about this.

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  2. So they think someone is going to get covid from an email?

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  3. Reminds me of what happened when my longtime server (Intergate) changed hands. All of a sudden, without a trace of a "heads up," all my archived mail disappeared. I was...not happy...about that. Not at all.

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    Replies
    1. Situations like that are EXACTLY why I use Thunderbird instead of relying on the web based version. Thunderbird downloads a local copy that's on my machine.

      Remember, "on the cloud" is the same as "on someone else's machine" and if you don't own that machine, you don't own the data.

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    2. Owning your own data is a very important thing that a lot of people including corporate leaders seem to forget about.

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  4. Quick - go to Duck Duck GO and sign up for the beta of their new secure email service. There is a waiting list. I got my name in early this AM. Annd if any one would take the last Netscape mail and get it working again I would jump back in a heartbeat. IMHO they had the best and most functional email handling program. When they went belly up I had AOL which got so screwed up that I jumped to Thunderbird. It is not bad but they have issues too. Anyone that comes up with a good solid email handler that is NOT Goog/Appl/MS/Yawhoo/AssOL etc. will get my business.

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  5. Thunderbird made me think of ZZ Top. R.I.P. Dusty Hill.

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