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LFC Scouser · 23-02-2020, 00:14

This has been an age old problem for me, my parents have had Virgin Media (NTLworld...) e-mail accounts since 2005, that's 15 years worth of accounts. It's actually restricted consumer choice for them as they have turned down alternative broadband providers who arguably offer a better service for them simply due to fear of losing access to their inboxes.

With a potential move in the pipeline, it's been a sticking point of what to do if they can't keep VM - even I couldn't move the amount of stuff that has accumulated in that inbox over to a new e-mail and even if I could the countless business contacts who have those e-mails in their address books would then no longer have that line of inquiry - what do people expect users to do, spam all their contacts or hack their address books?

The idle comments of "shouldn't use ISP e-mail" etc is wonderful, but I think many people forget that when many of these accounts were created, very few people knew what a third-party e-mail service was, and those that did probably didn't trust them (1999 & 2001 Hotmail security issues, Gmail wasn't kicking around until 2004, Yahoo was.... yahoo.). Many users who continue to use them after this date are using what they are familiar with.

They'd be happy to pay £100/year to keep the inboxes, that is definitely more than it's worth by a large margin, yet VM don't even offer that. I think that as a counter to anti-competitive behavior, ISPs should be required to maintain a user's e-mail account for a small fee (£1/GB mail-storage is probably fair), I hope OFCOM do take action on this. My faith in the regulator is almost zero however.

23-02-2020, 00:14	#8
LFC Scouser Gigabyte Greed Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Liverpool Services: 2 x V6 Box, VIP Bundle, M600, etc. Posts: 44	Re: OFCOM to review email account retention This has been an age old problem for me, my parents have had Virgin Media (NTLworld...) e-mail accounts since 2005, that's 15 years worth of accounts. It's actually restricted consumer choice for them as they have turned down alternative broadband providers who arguably offer a better service for them simply due to fear of losing access to their inboxes. With a potential move in the pipeline, it's been a sticking point of what to do if they can't keep VM - even I couldn't move the amount of stuff that has accumulated in that inbox over to a new e-mail and even if I could the countless business contacts who have those e-mails in their address books would then no longer have that line of inquiry - what do people expect users to do, spam all their contacts or hack their address books? The idle comments of "shouldn't use ISP e-mail" etc is wonderful, but I think many people forget that when many of these accounts were created, very few people knew what a third-party e-mail service was, and those that did probably didn't trust them (1999 & 2001 Hotmail security issues, Gmail wasn't kicking around until 2004, Yahoo was.... yahoo.). Many users who continue to use them after this date are using what they are familiar with. They'd be happy to pay £100/year to keep the inboxes, that is definitely more than it's worth by a large margin, yet VM don't even offer that. I think that as a counter to anti-competitive behavior, ISPs should be required to maintain a user's e-mail account for a small fee (£1/GB mail-storage is probably fair), I hope OFCOM do take action on this. My faith in the regulator is almost zero however.