Beware the digital eviction (10 Jan, 2019)

[aardvark_admin]

This column is archived at: https://aardvark.co.nz/daily/2019/0110.shtml

How much of a hassle would it be if you lost access to your primary email address?

What about if you had to change phone numbers for your mobile device?

Do you have contingency plans in place to cover such events?

It used to be that having an ISP-based email address was risky (ask Vodafone users about that). Is it also too risky now to have a GMail address as your primary email?

And have you safely stored away all the information needed to get a replacement SIM with your old phone number, should you lose your phone or have it stolen?

[goosemoose]

And all these companies wanting to email everything to you. Sure it'e easier cheaper for them to make you print out the stuff you need and them save on postage. I'm more than prepared to pay for paper stuff but I also have an ISP that still provides an email address and has an A1+++ help desk to boot!

Bit of live by the sword, die by sword here I think.

[granada29]

Its all rather tricky. Using a 3rd party email provider is good if your only alternative is your ISP (ref xtra fiascos over the last 10+ years) and you don't mind google/microsoft/apple/facebook reading/scraping your email. Also - remember you are NOT a customer of these corporations.

Find a friendly geek and have him/her host email for you, or do it yourself if you are that friendly geek. This also has a downside as you will probably lose access to your email if the friendly geek's network connection suffers from something like a back-hoe incident or a 'cloud' provider goes belly up. Megaupload anyone?

Back in the day, data integrity and security was a paramount concern in any computing environment with frequent backups (to tape) being the usual scenario. The new so called 'agile' approaches to data and software effectively throws all that out the window. Ship the product is now the primary concern - deal with issues when they arise. And hire good PR people who have a great vocabulary of buzzwords to explain their way out of 'issues'.

Sigh - fings ain't wot they used to be.

[hiscoca]

Exactly the reason I have my own domain names and mail hosting also why I maintain at least 1 pop account connected to the mail on these domains so I have a local PST file that contains my mail in case my server stops. If it stops withing a few hours I can have another up and running servicing those domains so no biggie and i still have the old mail.

3rd party free email accounts are not to be trusted or relied on in fact a freebie account can do your reputation harm if they are not professional operators.

[joeseph]

bit like hiscoa, I own my domain name but go a step further in that I run my own e-mail server.
It was originally just a lab exersize but went into prod when Vodafone pulled the plug on my previous paid-for mail service.

I think using any of the "free" systems could be viewed as disposable, and anyone not having local copies of mail & relying the provider to back it all up will eventually find out how temporary the system could be.
One of the big things I do is hold a list of everywhere my e-mail address is used as an account name!

[decibel]

Seems that Nuie has also been evicted from the .nu tld name.

[hagfish]

If I have a financial relationship with a company, I expect my credit card number would trump any email address requirement. "Would you like me to continue paying you, nor not?" tends to have only one answer.

if it's a 'free' account and I lose my login, I suppose I'd have to start again as 'hagfish2'