Verizon dropping email, but you still have options
Telecom giant proposing move to AOL’s system
Q: Verizon sent me a troubling note saying it’s getting out of the email business and wants me to move to AOL. How am I supposed to notify everybody of my new address in 30 days?
A: The New York-based telecommunications giant’s impending shutdown of its own Verizon.net email service and proposed migration of those users to AOL’s system has many recipients of an “Important notice regarding your Verizon.net email service” email worried they’ll have to change addresses. They don’t, but many will need to plug in new email settings to keep their Verizon addresses.
Verizon’s notice is reasonably clear about outlining the two options: have your mail moved to AOL and keep your address or “try another provider” and lose the address. But I suspect many people are not used to the idea of one mail service letting you use a different company’s address.
But AOL isn’t a separate company. It’s a Verizon property, having been bought in 2015. And not only should any mail, contacts and calendars saved on Verizon’s webmail site transfer intact (note that although I use Verizon’s Fios Internet service myself, I have yet to get the email announcing the move), you’ll get a better email service.
Verizon’s current mail system features the least effective spam filter I have seen in some 25 years of email use. It also doesn’t support a standard feature called IMAP that will sync messages across multiple devices; download an email from Verizon’s site to your laptop, and you can no longer see it on your phone.
AOL’s mail syncs across devices and isn’t helpless in the face of spam.
And making this switch will bring an unadvertised benefit, Verizon spokesman Raymond McConville noted in an email: You’ll be able to keep that Verizon address even if you move to a different Internet provider because “the verizon.net email is technically no longer tied to their broadband service.”
But you will have to plug in new server settings in any mail programs you use on a computer, phone or tablet. (That can happen even if your mail doesn’t move from one service to another: Verizon subscribers had to tweak mail settings after a 2015 security upgrade.)
If you get your mail in a Web browser, you’ll only have to bookmark a new address.
If you do nothing, you’ll lose access to your mail, contacts and calendar on whatever date was specified in your email notification. One reader had to guess after a database glitch led to that expiration date appearing as “null,” but it should be 30 days from your notice.
McConville said some 4.5 million email accounts are involved — “2.3 million of which are active, meaning they’ve been accessed in the last 30 days.”
The company had earlier begun deactivating some mail accounts that had not seen any activity in 180 days; in 2015, it stopped providing email addresses to new Internet subscribers.