Email forwarding from dead email address

[jtr1962]

Here's the problem. I recently switched from TWC/Spectrum to Verizon FIOS. TWC had given me an email account in which I set up several email addresses. When I shut down my TWC account these accounts were deleted. I had already downloaded and saved all of the current messages so no issues there. However, I'm obviously not going to know if anyone tries to send email to these addresses.

Is there a free forwarding service I can use to redirect messages sent to these old email accounts? I'm fine if these messages are sent to my yahoo or gmail accounts, so long as I get them.

 

[Stereodude]

What you want to do can't be done. Only TWC could offer the service you're after.

 

[jtr1962]

Really? That sucks. I was hoping there was a way of intercepting emails to the old addresses enroute and redirecting them elsewhere.

 

[Chewy509]

Yep... You'll need TWC to setup a forwarding service for you. (Most ISPs in Oz offer email only services for a few dollars per month). Ask them, they might have something?

 

[CougTek]

Really? That sucks. I was hoping there was a way of intercepting emails to the old addresses enroute and redirecting them elsewhere.

They own the domain name of your former e-mail. What were you expecting? If what you want to do was easily feasible, we would all be victims of man-in-the-middle hacks. E-mails wouldn't be even remotely reliable.

 

[Stereodude]

Really? That sucks. I was hoping there was a way of intercepting emails to the old addresses enroute and redirecting them elsewhere.

E-mail isn't like snail mail. There is no post office that all e-mail goes through before it's delivered to you. It's more like a giant mesh network and an e-mail can take a nearly infinite number of paths to the mailbox. As a result there's no way to intercept it along the way.

 

[jtr1962]

I guess I'll just see if TWC offers anything. In truth, at this point 99% of the emails going to these addresses are relatively unimportant stuff like product update notifications and stuff from the trade magazines I subscribe to. I just need to unlink my eBay and Paypal accounts from the old address.

 

[Tea]

The cheap email-only account is a good idea, but in reality, if you just forget about it the chances are that you will never notice anything you are missing.

And if by some chance something important does go there and gets lost, you won't ever find out about it so you won't ever miss it.

Relax and forget about it. Life is too short to waste on trivial things.

 

[sechs]

The fix for this is... Never use ISP-provided e-mail addresses.

I stopped doing this over fifteen years ago. I had been able to hold on to some of my old AT&T e-mail addresses because they were really Yahoo ones, but I never used them for more than throw-away addresses.

If you've been sitting on the same ISP for an extremely long time, this is probably the first time that you've recognised the pain of trying to switch your e-mail. Get a third-party box or pay to have one hosted for you and don't look back.

 

[LunarMist]

The fix for this is... Never use ISP-provided e-mail addresses.

I stopped doing this over fifteen years ago. I had been able to hold on to some of my old AT&T e-mail addresses because they were really Yahoo ones, but I never used them for more than throw-away addresses.

If you've been sitting on the same ISP for an extremely long time, this is probably the first time that you've recognised the pain of trying to switch your e-mail. Get a third-party box or pay to have one hosted for you and don't look back.

Yes. I took the advice to use the Fastmail.com and it works well.

 

[jtr1962]

The cheap email-only account is a good idea, but in reality, if you just forget about it the chances are that you will never notice anything you are missing.

And if by some chance something important does go there and gets lost, you won't ever find out about it so you won't ever miss it.

Relax and forget about it. Life is too short to waste on trivial things.

Probably good advice. 99% of what I was getting was throw-away emails that I rarely read. I stopped using these addresses for business a while ago. There may be a handful of old business contacts who might one day try to reach me, but in truth I'll bet that will never happen. In most cases I haven't had business from these people for years. There might also be a few online friends, but again in almost all cases I haven't heard from them in years, and probably never will.

After ten days I'm already finding I'm not missing much.

 

[jtr1962]

The fix for this is... Never use ISP-provided e-mail addresses.

I gradually stopped using it for anything important after seeing what my brother went through keeping his AOL address. I tend to think ISP-provided emails are one way they lock people into keeping shitty service. Once people are heavily dependent on the ISP email, it's a royal pain to switch providers.