Comments on: FCC asked to mandate 'e-mail address portability'

AOL incident sparks a demand for mandatory e-mail address portability regulations, similar to how telephone number portability regulations work. Here's why it's a remarkably silly idea.

[Static-X-Machina]

Fcc? ugh...who cares.

The Fcc is the most useless bunch of fools I have ever seen in my entire life.
'Nuff said.

[Tom Grezek]

Not a completely silly idea

A move forced me to change ISP's-forcing me to change my email address. My ISP was also my phone provider-as is often the case with the offerings they're making these days. Because the account was attached to my old address, I had to release the account on the date of my closing. The phone company (also my ISP) could keep my old phone number active for 60 days with a recording to callers of the changed number, but they couldn't help at all with the e-mail. It just shut off. I even offered to pay for 2 months, but because the new resident in my old home needed to be able to set up service, the phone company had to shut off my service to free up an account for them. Although I'd hate to see the FCC get involved, it would be nice for phone companies also providing ISP services, offer some transition management functionality as is offered with phone numbers. Today I pay for my own domain so I have more control over my address-a lesson learned from my move.

[fastboxster]

AOL's actions could foster identity theft

If you think about it, you wouldn't want a company to deactivate your account unfairly and not allow you to receive the emails addressed to you. Even worse, you wouldn't want others to be able to hijack your account (and identity). Frequently people are allowed to receive passwords for their various accounts by simply filling in a email address (where the reset password or link is then sent). I would think there could be liability issues if one were to incur losses as a result of an account wrongfully terminated, and that AOL would want to mitigate that risk. At the very minimum they should hold the account inactive for a period of a year or so to prevent someone from attempting to hijack your identity (by sabotaging your account such that it is terminated, then by applying for an account with the same address).

[heringermr]

Same e-mail address since 1995

I have had the same e-mail address since 1995. I have used the pobox.com service.

[msmaclusky]

"Silly"? I don't think so...

Thanks for bringing my petition to the FCC regarding e-mail
portability to the attention of a broader audience--it seems to
be opening up exactly the kind of conversation about the rights
of consumers with regard to their email accounts that I hoped it
would. You'll be happy to know that AOL apparently agreed with
you that the concept of preventing the abrupt termination of
email accounts was so ridiculous that it was unworthy of their
attention. Before filing the petition with the FCC, I sent copies of
it to the top brass at both AOL and Time Warner and no one
bothered to reply. This didn't particularly surprise me, though,
because I never received responses to any of the previous letters
I'd written to the same executives. I did, however, receive
repeated phone calls from someone in AOL customer service
who described himself as being with the "corporate offices".
Apparently all of my letters were automatically routed to him
from the legal departments at both AOL and Time Warner. It was
this almost fortress-like impenetrability surrounding AOL that
made me realize I needed to find another way to bring this
important consumer issue to the fore. You speak in your article
about shining the light on my "silly" idea as the best means of
making it go away. Basically, filing the FCC petition was my way
of shining the light on the (nonexistent) rights that consumers
have to what they erroneously believe are "their" email accounts.
I had been a paying customer of AOL for years, yet they shut
down my account virtually overnight in the middle of a billing
cycle. The phone call that led to termination of the account was
on a Saturday evening of a busy weekend preceding the holidays
last December. After getting as far as I could with customer
service that night, I figured I'd call them back on Monday and
straighten the matter out. Imagine my shock when I went to
access my account on Monday and found that it had already
been shut down, and all my email folders associated with it were
now lost forever. Frankly, I still don't understand what legal right
AOL had to basically dump what was my property--stored on
space that I in essence rented from them--in so peremptory a
manner. To my mind, they had no more right to do so than a
company renting me storage space for my physical possessions
would have to decide on a whim that they no longer wanted me
as a customer, and then proceed to throw my stuff away. I
couldn't help but notice that most of the respondents to your
piece seemed to conclude from the so-called stupidity of my
petition that I was technologically challenged, and therefore
presumably deserving of what happened to me. While I will
readily agree that I am no techie (in fact, I would say that I do
deserve the moniker technologically challenged), I have to tell
you that there are many of us out there. Virtually to a person,
EVERYONE who has heard my story about how I was "locked out"
of my email account overnight and lost all my associated folders
accumulated over years, responded with a visceral and emphatic,
"They can't do that." Well I am here to tell you that they can!
And given that I live and work in the nation's capital, this was
hardly a bunch of rubes. In fact many of the outraged were
lawyers, whose instant response was, "You can't let them get
away with that." (Yes, I am sure that most of your readers back
up their email files each and every day, so that such a fate could
never befall them. But, trust me, most of us don't.) It was
actually one of these lawyers, a guy with many years' experience
practicing telecommunications law, who gave me the idea and
the legal basis for the petition. He's a pretty smart guy, so
maybe, just maybe, the concept isn't so stupid after all. Finally,
let me say that I find your position that email is now "free" so we
consumers should all just roll over and let the ISP/email service
providers basically have their way with us to be positively
frightening. Overlooking the fact that for me email wasn't even
free--it was a service I was paying for--it's absurd. These
service providers aren't doing this out of the goodness of their
benevolent corporate hearts. They're doing it because they get
paid handsomely through the advertising dollars that flow into
their coffers because we use their sites. Why would you be
willing to let them get away with absolutely no accountability
whatsoever? If you woke up tomorrow and found all of the
material associated with your email accounts gone--
everything--would you really be OK with that because the
service had been provided for "free"?

[dpickle]

FCC opens formal proceeding (9/26/07)

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-276866A1.pdf

[markj99]

I am stunned at the vociferous objections to the proposed forwarding rule! While I agree wholeheartedly that the proposed 'email portability' rule is unreasonable, and completely unworkable, I think requiring internet service providers to forward email -- for a short period of time -- would be such a good thing as to be worth the risk of allowing government meddling with the internet free market.

Yes, it's no doubt a bad idea to depend on ISP-hosted email, but the fact is many people do. And even internet-savvy users sometime are required to use ISP-hosted email address by vendors, or other services who won't accept "free" email accounts such as gmail or hotmail. So the fact is, many users cannot easily change service providers until they are certain that all their contacts have been notified that they have changed their email hosts.

But if ISP's were required to forward email, even for a brief period such as 60 days, those people could be more certain that all of their contacts had been notified, and could more easily switch ISP's.

Claiming that the cost of email forwarding would be prohibitive is, frankly, ludicrous: Forwarding email messages is no more expensive than sending a bounce message, or at least sending a "change of address" email to the sender. And in fact, forwarding email could even be a revenue generator for the prior ISP, through the insertion of paid advertisement into the body of the forwarded message.

The truth is, the only real cost to the former ISP of short-term forwarding email, is the fact that their previous client has changed providers! So, I wonder how many actual end-users would object to short-term email forwarding.