Email Woes
March 2nd, 2018Stick With the Borg or Pull Out the Wires?
Wonder if anyone out there can give me email advice.
My dad insisted on using AOL long after the rest of the galaxy moved on. Now he has a million AOL contacts, plus a massive archive of emails, some of which are not worthless.
AOL is dying. Today I was not able to access my dad’s business emails because AOL was down. Sooner or later, there may come a day when AOL simply evaporates, and that will be inconvenient.
The answer is a new email account. I know that already. But what’s the best answer?
I don’t like the big free email providers. I have a Yahoo account, and Yahoo looks shakier every day. I have a feeling I’m going to lose everything within a couple of years. I don’t like Gmail. I suppose Gmail is considerably more secure than AOL or Yahoo, but titans have a way of crumbling unexpectedly, and anything is possible.
Today I was extraordinarily blessed to find a very compact domain name which is perfect for my dad. It’s 5 letters with a com suffix. That’s just about unbeatable, especially in 2018, when you can literally run a finger over your keys at random, type “.com” after, it, do a search, and find out it’s taken. I bought the domain name, and because I have my own hosting, I added it to my hosting account and created an email address.
Great.
Here’s the question: is this the way to go?
Outsourcing has some benefits. I can go anywhere, take out my phone, enter a username and password, and get my dad’s emails for the last umpteen years (however long he has subscribed). I can do that with a private domain, too, but it’s not as easy. I’ll have to install the account on my phone and every other device I use. I’ll have to put access-related info in files.
I don’t expect to receive tons of email, so I don’t think storage will be an issue. Not to be morbid, but even if we get spam, my dad is not very likely to be around in 5 years, so we won’t have time to run into a glut problem. Even if we do, storage keeps getting cheaper and more abundant.
What would you do? I trust myself more than I trust Google, which is like saying I trust myself more than I would trust Hitler or Stalin, but I don’t want to do a bunch of work for nothing.
I also want to find a way to download and archive every AOL email he has. I have a feeling AOL does not like that and makes it difficult.
March 2nd, 2018 at 4:58 PM
I create email accounts on my own domain. I can log into control panel with a web browser on anything from anywhere. It’s only a couple of extra steps.
March 2nd, 2018 at 6:56 PM
I still use AOL. It tightens up my geezer cred. But then I worked for them back in the day to get the free net access. I have archived my mail, and it was time consuming, but there were 34000 plus mails.
I have a GMX account. It’s free, they have some interesting features, and it will work seamlessly with outlook etc.
March 2nd, 2018 at 7:25 PM
You’re going to need one of those squeeze change purses and a flip phone.
I installed the depressing new AOL desktop and found a button for saving emails to the PC, but the emails only went back to 2015, and I have no idea where they went, so I can’t back them up. It looks like there is a way to save them to a new folder. I have a feeling that if I do that and back them up, I will only be able to access them through the AOL desktop.
March 2nd, 2018 at 7:53 PM
I just use AOL online. I have not used the desktop since the 90’s, even when I was a “Community leader” helping people winterize their lawn mowers. You might be better served to try that. The AOL desktop is a virus.
https://www.aol.com/
March 2nd, 2018 at 8:37 PM
I couldn’t find anyway to download emails en masse from the browser version. I really did not want the new desktop.
March 2nd, 2018 at 9:37 PM
Back in the day, and I mean way back in the day there was a way to save the AOL emails. I used to do genealogy with AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve. That was probably with DOS. I believe I remember doing it with logging the sessions. I know I still have saved text files from AOL logging sessions. But that was a long time ago and those files are on a backup drive it isn’t easy to get to right now.
If I could remember what my password was back then I probably could still get on. I know I don’t have the same email address. I do use gmail, just because I have changed internet providers a number of times.
March 2nd, 2018 at 10:39 PM
it looks like AOL has pop and imap servers. If this is true you should be able to configure any email client you like and download your email locally.
I found this link: https://help.aol.com/articles/how-do-i-use-other-email-applications-to-send-and-receive-my-aol-mail
Never had AOL so I can’t vouch for it.
March 3rd, 2018 at 4:56 PM
Reagan dot Com
It’s a secure e-mail service, and you’re not giving money to the leftist loonballz.
Worth investigating, I think. Alas, I’ve got to not do so at the moment, as work awaits.
But, having had the same Hotmail account since 1997, I figure it’s getting kinda ripe, anyway. Plus, MicroTyrant has really been doing some Google grade Evil with the site’s “features” of late.
I just need to find the right nerd who can migrate everything I’ve got on Hotmail, over to Reagan.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
March 6th, 2018 at 8:01 AM
I’d prefer hosting my email on GoDaddy than Reagan.com, which would seem to be a honeypot for lefties and jihadists to target.
Not sure anything is that secure.
Don’t store anything you don’t want the NSA to see on anything with a network card.
March 6th, 2018 at 11:39 AM
It’s hard for me to imagine anything I could possess that would not disappoint the NSA once they stole it.
I hate knowing that we live with Uncle Sam’s malevolent, dangerous nose up our rectums 24/7, but I don’t see any fix for it.
I like the idea of having a server, just for the illusion of control.