Changing Email Addresses Sucks!

[In2Photos]

We are considering changing ISPs as fiber was just installed in the neighborhood. My primary email address has been in use for 20+ years with our current ISP. If we change ISP, our email address go away. So in preparation I started migrating everything over to a new non ISP specific address. What a pain in the rear! All these accounts! I never realized how many there are, holy crap! But what's really frustrating is that some of these companies don't allow you to change your email address on your account! WHAT? How is that even a thing?!?! One of the ones I'm working on is with TP-Link. I have 45 of their Kasa smart plugs/switches installed and also have Alexa integration. It looks like I will have to create a new account with the new email address, reset the devices and then add them to the new account (which takes some time), and then have to go back in to Alexa and set up the routines again.

Plus Google doesn't seem to have an easy way to move things from one account to another. What a mess. Glad my kids are using non-ISP based emails so they hopefully don't have to go through this at some point.

Anybody have any tips or tricks they've learned on this?

 

[lxskllr]

I just did it by hand, and abandoned some old stuff. You might be able to pay for email from the old isp to give you breathing room. Transfer stuff over as you feel like doing it.

 

[nakedfrog]

I went through this a few years ago when I moved cross-country, I started changing email addresses months in advance so I could monitor the email box that would be getting closed to see what was still coming in. Yeah, sadly sometimes the best way to deal is to make a new account with a given service.

 

[Stiff Clamp]

As far as migrating all the old mail . . . , my last New Account setup (at mailo.com) offered the convenience of retrieving all the mail sitting in my former account, I just had to input the log-in parameters for the mail server and it did the deed, downloading all mail from my old service provider. I was pleased.

Don't know how many providers out there offer this easy migration tool.

 

[highland145]

Haven't kicked ATT to the curb for just that reason. Some places I might 1 email a year but they're important to keeping my license.

 

[bba-tcg]

We are considering changing ISPs as fiber was just installed in the neighborhood. My primary email address has been in use for 20+ years with our current ISP. If we change ISP, our email address go away. So in preparation I started migrating everything over to a new non ISP specific address. What a pain in the rear! All these accounts! I never realized how many there are, holy crap! But what's really frustrating is that some of these companies don't allow you to change your email address on your account! WHAT? How is that even a thing?!?! One of the ones I'm working on is with TP-Link. I have 45 of their Kasa smart plugs/switches installed and also have Alexa integration. It looks like I will have to create a new account with the new email address, reset the devices and then add them to the new account (which takes some time), and then have to go back in to Alexa and set up the routines again.

Plus Google doesn't seem to have an easy way to move things from one account to another. What a mess. Glad my kids are using non-ISP based emails so they hopefully don't have to go through this at some point.

Anybody have any tips or tricks they've learned on this?

You might check with the ISP you're leaving to make sure you lose the email address. I still have an sbcglobal.net email address and haven't been an AT&T customer for 20 years. I can still login and change settings for it too. It's not my primary address, but I do still use it on occasion..

 

[lxskllr]

As far as migrating all the old mail . . . , my last New Account setup (at mailo.com) offered the convenience of retrieving all the mail sitting in my former account, I just had to input the log-in parameters for the mail server and it did the deed, downloading all mail from my old service provider. I was pleased.

Don't know how many providers out there offer this easy migration tool.

The hassle is more people that infrequently contact you, and you kind of forget about them. I've never not used a mail client, so my mail's on my local computer, but it's hard keeping track of the various entities that only know of the old mail address. Mailo is a good service though. I use them as one of my primary accounts, and pay for the "premium" service.

 

[In2Photos]

I'll check with my ISP just to be sure but when I did some searching I saw many people mention that once the account is closed the ISP will leave the email up for 30 days and then shut it down.

So far I've been changing the email as I receive one, but I also went through my password manager one at a time and updated that way. Doing mine first so that I can help my wife do hers. Pretty sure she is going to complain about this one for a while.

 

[lxskllr]

If you can't keep your email from the isp, look into getting a bottom basement service with them, maybe even dialup. If you can get service cheap enough, it might be worth doing for awhile. You don't have to use it aside from the email address.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This is one of the reasons I had opted not to use my ISP provided email for anything, I didn't want to be tied to a specific ISP. I have my own domain so just been using emails with that domain since like 2003ish. I've bounced around from using a shard web host to hosting my own email and even played with domain registrar hosting for a quick fix to get an email working, but as long as it's on my own domain the way it's hosted matters less. I use fetchmail from my local mail server to fech via pop3s. All the spam filtering happens on my local server.

 

[In2Photos]

I just checked, ISP said email would be shut down 60 days after disconnect and she said they can only keep them with an internet package. Cheapest one is like $50/month so we'll just continue with the migration.

 

[FelixDeCat]

This is why I started using Gmail about 20 years ago. I have had the same email ever since. I got tired of losing email access with ISP changes.

I use Protonmail on the side and am rather impressed with it as well.

 

[PowerEngineer]

This is why I started using Gmail about 20 years ago. I have had the same email ever since...

That was my reason for grabbing a Gmail account as soon as I tracked down an "invitation" back in those good old days... 😄 I also grabbed an identical outlook.com email when Microsoft opened those up.

The irony is that we have never switched our ISP (which says something about the lack of competition here). I still use the ISP email address as a throw-away for sites that insist I provide them with an email address.

I did actually decide to change my ISP email address last year because it had apparently gotten added to every spanner's list (at least once). I did have to update some accounts that I decided to keep with my new ISP address, but my password safe (KeePass) helped a lot.

FWIW I still use the Microsoft Outlook app to manage all my email addresses, and it gives me the ability to save/archive my emails locally. Whenever possible, I set a user name on an account rather than letting it default to my email address.

 

[lxskllr]

Services that let you setup aliases are pretty handy. Mailo lets you do that. For companies/services I don't plan on having a long term relationship with, I use an alias. That way if it turns into a spam dump, it can just be burned down and another picked. If you use a different alias for every questionable signup, it'll also tell you which service sold you out. So far, my aliases have stayed clean, so it's only a theoretical benefit.

 

[In2Photos]

Got the rest of my accounts from my password manager swapped over yesterday. So that should be the majority of my accounts. I'm sure there are a few stragglers that will show up over the next few months. The fiber isn't ready in the neighborhood yet so I still have a little time.

As I suspected Kasa is going to be my biggest headache. All 45 devices have to be reset, then added to the new account. No way to change the account email. I think I may have figured out a smart way to transfer them. I have to do it one at a time, but that is probably the nest way to keep everything organized. It will also take 2 phones to complete the task. Phone 1 will have the original account pulled up so I can see exactly how I named each device. This is critical for my Alexa integration and routines. Phone 2 will have the new account ready to add each device one by one. Once complete I can log out of Kasa on Alexa and log back in with the new account. Hopefully it recognizes all the devices and the routines work without redoing. I may have to edit the routine and re-select the device, time will tell.

On another note I was able to move YouTube and all my Google calendars over to the new account. Not too difficult, just have to follow some guides found online.

My Android phone is also setup with the new account as defualt now. That was more difficult than it could be. Android should allow you to select which account to use as default, but no, it uses the account you logged into first. So you have to remove that account. I had 4 accounts on my phone though (my original, my wife's, my son's, and my new account). So I had to remove the other 3 accounts to make the new one default. Then I could log back into the other accounts, but I think I have realized that I don't need those accounts on my phone anymore. I did it to monitor my son's activity/gmail when he was younger and to have access to my wife's calendars. Instead, she can just share the calendars (don't know why I did it the other way before).

There is no way my wife would be able to do this on her own. She would get so frustrated. Thankfully I have learned some stuff that should make her transition go a little smoother.