Changing email addresses

[H2ODude]

I think I'm finally ready to address an error I made about two decades ago. When I signed up for high speed internet (was Roadrunner, now Spectrum) I got my main email account with them, an @.rr.com account. I've used it for everything except family which I have other accounts. Just about everything I have a password or account for uses this as my identifier. Which means if I change internet providers I have to go through the hassle of changing that identifier with every business/entity I want to keep contact with. IRS, SS, insurance, and so forth.

I guess there's no way around this. With the advent of streaming and many bundling deals offered out there the only way I can ditch Spectrum is open up my passwords file on Safari and go through changing it on any entity in which I want to continue contact with. Has anyone else gotten trapped like this? I can't imagine there's a workaround as it would involve Spectrum's cooperation. Like, yeah. I just noticed my autopay to them jumped about $30, no explanation.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

Many, many years ago, I recognized this as a problem and decided to never use the email system provided by my internet service provider. I chose Google's gmail service and have had the same gmail account since then.

Unfortunately, you are correct. I don't think I know of any easy solution to fixing the issue except to change the accounts (where you can) one-by-one. In some cases, it might not even be able to change things since the account name itself is often your email address. They might let you keep the account name the same but change the Contact email address. But this is not always the case. You may need to create new accounts entirely at some places. This will really be bad in some situations.

Edited to add: If you decide to go through the changeover, I would probably start making the switch at least a year ahead of cancelling your service. That way you can still follow the old email system for stragglers. And/or you can probably forward the emails from the Spectrum account to whatever email service you use. That forwarding would stop, however, when Spectrum cancels your account.

 

[Midpack]

I have three email addresses, never saw the need to delete old ones. My first was Comcast, and they never cut me off even though I never use their mail app or website anymore. So if someone uses an old one, I still see the message - my mail apps "see" all three email addresses so it's seamless. And it's handy if I am sending an email to someone I don't really want to share my primary gmail address with. Gmail is certainly handy, but of course Google is mining every one of your emails, that's what "free" costs. FWIW

 

[H2ODude]

Yeah, you've just confirmed my misery. My plan is just that, finally start to comb through and give it a year. Searching my Safari Keychain is proving quite daunting. In some cases it still keeps defunct passwords on accounts that I've updated with more secure ones. Oh well. Journey of 1,000 miles starts with a few steps.

 

[tulak]

I use a gmail account for the same reason.

I’d recommend a gradual migration and setup forwarding if possible. The easier part are dealing with businesses, etc, since the change is immediate.

The harder part is individuals, but that depends on how many personal correspondences you get.

Either way, it’s a worthwhile transition.

 

[H2ODude]

I have three email addresses, never saw the need to delete old ones. My first was Comcast, and they never cut me off even though I never use their mail app or website anymore. So if someone uses an old one, I still see the message. And it's handy if I am sending an email to someone I don't really want to share my primary gmail address with. FWIW

Lost a lot of my tech savvy over the years but I'm recalling that for a lot of my accounts if I lose or need to change a password, it directs me to an email sent to this roadrunner account (which the business, like Apple, has on file). I've googled and in fact stopping Spectrum would end that access. I'm realizing this is going to be very painful.

 

[Dash man]

I took about a year to ditch my Comcast email address. Switched to an Apple email for my personal accounts, and a Gmail address that my wife and I share for financial and utilities accounts. It’s worked pretty well. I can still login to Comcast, but haven’t in a while. I might use that email address for something I know will generate a lot of advertising or spam email.

 

[gauss]

If you do go through the pain of making a manual switch of all of your accounts off of the .rr.com email address, I would NOT transition to anything like gmail.com -- even though it would be very convenient to do so.

The problem is that if you do this you will be setting yourself up for the same problem down the road (ie. ask me about my yahoo.com grief).

What I recommend is that you acquire a domain the you and only you own and control (ie yourlastname.org or whatever). You will have to pay yearly to register the domain maybe $15/year.

You would then also want to get an email forwarding service or some other solution where you don't actually have to manage a mail server.

One solution would be to pay google attach your domain to gmail directly.

Here is a list of other providers.
(Your question today was very timely for me ;-) )

The key part of all of this is that you will be able to abstract your email address from your underlying service provider so that if the relationship with the underlying service provider goes bad in the future, you just have one area to change in the future.

-gauss

 

[jimbee]

Yep, that's why I registered my own domain and use email forwarding to an address I created using that domain. That way I can continue to use the same email address, even if I change my email provider. I switched to gmail using this method as soon as they supported IMAP.

 

[CaptTom]

I have my own domain name (well, a number of them) and am seriously considering migrating to Gmail. Having a personalized domain name used to be kind of cool, now it's a bit lame. Having to spell it out for people is a pain. Everyone knows how to spell "gmail."

The advantage, of course, is that I can keep it for as long as I want, and forward everything to Gmail.

Another thing I did was get on board early with Gmail, and before that, Yahoo and even AOL. I got my real name as an e-mail address in all of them, and some other good ones that I use where I don't want my real name broadcast.

There's a guy with my same name whose Gmail address must be similar to mine because I often get his messages, especially receipts and confirmations, but a few times I got responses to his bids for work.

 

[H2ODude]

If you do go through the pain of making a manual switch of all of your accounts off of the .rr.com email address, I would NOT transition to anything like gmail.com -- even though it would be very convenient to do so.

The problem is that if you do this you will be setting yourself up for the same problem down the road (ie. ask me about my yahoo.com grief).

What I recommend is that you acquire a domain the you and only you own and control (ie yourlastname.org or whatever). You will have to pay yearly to register the domain maybe $15/year.

You would then also want to get an email forwarding service or some other solution where you don't actually have to manage a mail server.

One solution would be to pay google attach your domain to gmail directly.

Here is a list of other providers.
(Your question today was very timely for me ;-) )

The key part of all of this is that you will be able to abstract your email address from your underlying service provider so that if the relationship with the underlying service provider goes bad in the future, you just have one area to change in the future.

-gauss

OK, I have to ask! What happened with Yahoo? My wife has her email there and it drives me nuts, but I already have a gmail and iCloud email address I was thinking about using. Your solution sounds ironclad, but I'm not sure I'd care to tackle it without one of my tech savvy kids helping me walk through it.

 

[tulak]

Having your own domain is nice, but on the list of things to worry about, losing my gmail e-mail isn’t even on the list.

Of course, you could get your own domain and have it forwarded if it’s a concern. I think Apple even added e-mail support for personal domains recently.

 

[street]

As far as changing an email address I personally don't think it's a problem but more of the hassle. Every financial, business and Gov entities all have a place to change your email address.

As easy as changing your current home address or phone number. The 10 or so emails I would be need changed all have a spot to change my email address.

Good luck.

 

[retire48in2018]

I had this issue with a phone number - not email. I had to change numbers - and phone number was security on so many items. It was ridiculous!

There were so many times that the account could *not* update the number (at least by front line customer service). It was insane for about a month.

As a note - phone numbers are not as portable as you might think! Maybe it’s a rarity - i don’t know.

 

[street]

^ I have changed phone number many times and never had an issue. It might have taken 30 days for them to get changes but considering the task involved things changed and all was good. A Hassle YES!

If anything of business importance email isn't an avenue of contact anyway. Just from my personal experience not trying to disagree. The next time I have to change my experiences may change.

 

[FIYes]

Years ago, I saw this would be a problem and switched to a yahoo email address. I’m not sure what the issue is that others have referenced with yahoo. I haven’t had any issues with it except that since it is the email I use to sign up with businesses I get quite a few emails. The other issue I have with my yahoo account is I didn’t put my real name on the account so if I send and an email from that account it shows up as from “not real name”. Yes, I followed instructions to fix that but no success.

I have another yahoo email that I only allow real humans to access. I don’t get spammed in this account. Then I also have two gmail accounts. Really 4 email accounts is too many. I don’t recommend that. However, I do like having an email that is restricted to friends only.

 

[Montecfo]

I guess this will become a problem if my "junk"email starts charging.

 

[H2ODude]

Thanks for the comments. I'm concluding that making the change by proactively trying to winnow out every possible encounter with the over 100 stored passwords on keychain is a bridge too far. Instead I'm going to do the important ones and friends, then watch what happens for a year to determine the extent of the problem (which I'm beginning to think will not be that onerous). I'm guessing the one big problem will be where a password re-do only can go to the old RR account. But, there will have to be some fix available. Alas, I'm not that damn unique.

 

[Graybeard]

Many years ago I had Direct TV and ATT phone, not sure who my ISP was it may have been NetZero. I dropped D TV and bundled everything with Charter (Spectrum). The ATT Yahoo! email account is still active and I receive a few to several emails per day to it so maybe that is why it was never closed. My point is, would Spectrum cancel your email account? If yes is there a provision to forward emails to the Spectrum address to a new one while you transition? Proton email has a free and paid version, you chose the email and can keep it.

I feel the problem you have re businesses using your email address as your user name. It seems to me they should change it to the new email but maybe that can't be done.

 

[travelover]

I left ATT years ago and still use the same yahoo email address.

 

[NW-Bound]

I had cox.net as my email for many years. I realized the mistake of being tied to an ISP, and started to use email addresses from Microsoft and Google.

When I changed my ISP, I went through all accounts that I used the cox.net email on, and changed the registration email. Good thing I did that, because a year or two later, my cox.net email got deleted.

I think it was dumb for Cox to delete old email accounts. Many companies love people to use their email accounts for various business reasons.

 

[target2019]

When you change, try to find the best platform that is not tied to a company in a restrictive way. Then it is your decision whether to pay, how much is acceptable and so on.

I use comcast.net for personal matters. Also used a different comcast email for work contact. Then I use gmail accounts for special purposes.

I just dropped my consulting email workspace with google. Not worth the domain renewal each year.

Having various accounts and knowing how to use them was useful in my consulting years.

The main attraction with gmail is uptime. Same is probably true for MS, APPL, etc.

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I had this issue with a phone number - not email. I had to change numbers - and phone number was security on so many items. It was ridiculous!

There were so many times that the account could *not* update the number (at least by front line customer service). It was insane for about a month.

As a note - phone numbers are not as portable as you might think! Maybe it’s a rarity - i don’t know.

Well, they are required to let you port your phone number, with certain restrictions that are easy to get around: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-phone-number-when-you-change-providers

My dad, who was not very tech savvy at all but very persistent, got my childhood home phone number ported to a cell phone when he sold the house and moved in 2006. When he passed, I ported it to Google Voice for a one-time $20 fee just for the nostalgia value.

Anyway, my point is that I actually started using Google Voice as my primary phone number even before that, because I saw the need for number portability and I liked the ability to control which callers rang through and which went directly to voicemail (the latter is pretty much everyone but those on a very short list). Now, there are a handful of providers that for some reason can't text Google Voice numbers, but I've started using my actual cell# for that when needed, since call screening has gotten better. (Many cell providers will do their own blacklisting of known spam callers, or some show "Probable Spam" as the caller ID!)

 

[MdaPetralia]

If you have Comcast email, you can continue using your email even after you disconnect and stop paying for service. You can then forward/retrieve your email from Comcast to/through your new email provider/portal.

"Your email account will remain active if you access it using the Xfinity Connect web portal at least once every nine months".

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-email-only

 

[Golden sunsets]

I could have written your original post H2O Dude. I became aware that using .rr.com was a mistake many years ago, so all new registrations have been on a gmail account since. I never really thought I'd leave Spectrum, but knew it "could" become a problem if we moved or a better/cheaper option became available. Spectrum has had a monopoly on good reliable internet service in our market. I have had all email to the Spectrum account auto forwarded to gmail and then auto deleted from Spectrum for perhaps 15 years. Just this month though I became aware that a competing provider is installing fiber in our neighborhood this summer, with even higher speeds than the 200mb/400mb Spectrum currently provides. So there will finally be a good reason to switch. I do have a spreadsheet of accounts with user names , so I can start with that as a source to change addresses. I don't know of any better way to navigate this. One thing I think I'll do though is stop auto deleting from Spectrum so that I can go into my dashboard on their system before terminating to catch any important accounts/contacts my spreadsheet didn't include.

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