I have had an email address with earthlink since, oh…1995!
It really doesn’t make sense anymore to have this account with the $21 fee each month when I can have a perfectly good gmail account or even an address through our Verizon Fios account.
What’s stopping me from changing? Automatic billing, financial statements, medical accounts, etc. The thought of changing so many email addresses is frankly paralyzing.
Has anyone made a major email address change? What suggestions do you have to prevent bills and important notices from falling through the cracks? Will this take a full year? Is there any kind of forwarding service?
I have my original email address forwarded to my gmail account. You can then slowly work on changing your email address with credit cards, companies, webpages, etc. as they come in.
I left AOL email when my kid informed me that only geezers use it. Switched to gmail—kept the AOL account for a month or so to forward mail and eventually switched over. It was so much easier than I expected.
@Mom22039 thanks for starting this thread! I’ve had my AOL account since 1995 (what a Godsend it was with a newborn in the house - saved my sanity to go online). I get so much spam that it’s almost unusable, so I know I need to make the change. I will do it!
I’ve been going through that same situation. Been working on it about 6 months and am just about ready to kill the old addresses. The first few weeks were pretty tough. I sat down several nights in a row and made as many changes as I could starting with the most used and important and keeping a list. Keeping your old addresses for a while is really important because many sites use them for recovering passwords. Businesses haven’t been hard to change, just time consuming. Friends are harder to convince. Good luck!
Thanks all for your comments and thoughts. To get ready, I’ve been unsubscribing from as many lists as I can. Those will be easy to re-sub.
It does seem a bit daunting in a one-more-thing way. I have three email addresses I regularly use plus multiple devices including 2 phones and an ipad. I need to simplify something — and save some money along the way!
When I called to cancel my EarthLink account, they offered me a rate that was about $8 per month. I accepted the offer and migrated my accounts to a new email account over the next year. I would not change to an email account from your ISP, as you will want to switch at some point. Use a gmail account or purchase your own domain so you have control over it.
Thanks for starting this thread, I still have my AOL email address (like @Bromfield2 my kids tell me thats for old people) and had no idea I could forward over the email. I plan to do this soon.
Funny, when downsizing and switching ISP, I needed a new email address and chose one a lot of my friends used - an aol account. That’s when I learned (from my kids) that aol is for old people! Guilty as charged.
I now also have a gmail account that I keep for family and ‘important’ things. But I use the aol account for commercial accounts that might sell my email address. I have my aol stuff sent to my gmail account. I did have some reply issues and had to change my gmail settings to allow replies from the account which received the email.
We have had several speakers at our company from both the CIA and FBI and they always stress that AOL is the least secure platform and they recommend getting away from it completely. They all have said it simply should not be used in this day and age- that anything else is better.
I migrated away from my older ISP accounts about 5 years ago. Took at least a year. I still occasionally get a friend or two that can’t seem to update their address books – and I remind them each time. But I still use the old ISP address for “junk mail” that I occasionally want to visit, or if it is required to sign up for a service with an email account (like Facebook ). I’ll use it for temporary searches as well (like when we were hunting for a car, and were swarmed with sales pitches).
I also keep 3 separate addresses with my newer account (not a Google fan). One is family only. One is for friends. One is for more business or personal type correspondance with a business (anything from contractors to airlines to MD’s, etc.). It helps me “triage” my email. Only the newer 3 addresses are forwarded to my phone. Most of the junk comes to the original ISP address, and I only visit that once a week or so.
It has cut down tremendously on having to wade through junk to see what I consider the more important correspondance.
I have 5 email accounts. Two are yahoo accounts that end up in the same mailbox. One is a gmail account. The last is a domain for my nonprofit that just forwards email to my yahoo and gmail accounts.
Oh yeah, we also have a family email that’s the local phone company that provides our internet. We hardly ever check that account but rarely get anything sent there.
I like having two factor identification on my yahoo and gmail accounts and it feels more secure. I like not paying for any of the accounts.
I have a very old account (from @netscape.net in the 90s!) that I keep for anything that’ll create junk mail (“Abe Books has found the title you’re looking for!”). Most of my college research accounts go back to it, for example. I bet that thing gets 100 messages a day, but I only go in there every couple weeks and cull the inbox to be certain I’m not missing anything useful. Everything important goes to my home gmail account. I used to have more, but I’ve slowly been hacking them away since I noticed how rarely I went to the secondaries. But, yes, these days there’s no reason at all to pay for email.
Which email is the safest to use? One that the provider doesn’t read? I have had hotmail account forever. Recently, I began to notice they are reading my emails. They notify me it is time to check in my flight or remind me of the hotel reservation I made. Also, advertising shows up related to some of the emails I sent. I don’t think two factor verification will protect me from the provider themselves.
Define Safe. Gmail is safe in that others can’t read your stuff and they’re very good about spam filtering. On the other hand THEY read your stuff for advertising, so pick your poison. Maybe find someone reputable that offers free or cheap mail that isn’t large, smart, rich or aggressive enough to scan your messages. I can’t think of who that might be at the moment, but it could happen.
