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Email absolutely should be a utility and allow you to transfer your email address between providers just like you can your phone number. I understand the techni

by franga2000 5y ago

Email absolutely should be a utility and allow you to transfer your email address between providers just like you can your phone number. I understand the technical challenges associated with that due to how DNS and the email protocols work, but I don't particularly care. There should also be a legally required minimal level of customer support for email account issues - if I can't get access to my email for over a week because of an issue on their end or even on mine, there better be a support rep ready to talk to me over the phone and get it sorted. For all of the things that could ruin me if lost/stolen (government ID, bank accounts, phone number...), I have an automatic last-resort strategy of getting in a car, driving to a place and annoying someone in-person enough to get my problem solved. But email is the only exception. I've tried looking for providers in my country, but they all went out of business around the time gmail launched. So now my only options are international megacorps with no support for anyone without 100k twitter followers or small companies with offices on the other side of the continent.

rossmohax 5y ago
DNS is used to figure out initial point of contact over SMTP, nothing stops said SMTP server to recognize recipient as transferred account and forward message to SMTP server account was transferred to.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  That would only help if you transferred an entire domain, surely? The initial DNS lookup doesn't have the local part that you'd need to identify individual accounts, does it?
- franga2000 5y ago
  Of course, but that still relies on the SMTP server's support. If a provider goes out of business or simply refuses to forward messages, an email address is still dead. That's why we'd need laws to regulate both scenarios: require operators to forward old accounts regardless of anything (including things like government sanctions) and set up a central email forwarder organization to take on email domains of defunct providers (and the legal framework to transfer domains to it). An ideal system would of course allow you to truly take your address with you to another provider and sever any link to your old one, just like you can with your phone number. The current semantics of email addresses don't allow that or require you to own your own domain name, which given the sad state of the business end of the DNS, isn't feasible on a large scale either.

rossmohax 5y ago

DNS is used to figure out initial point of contact over SMTP, nothing stops said SMTP server to recognize recipient as transferred account and forward message to SMTP server account was transferred to.

zimpenfish 5y ago
That would only help if you transferred an entire domain, surely? The initial DNS lookup doesn't have the local part that you'd need to identify individual accounts, does it?
franga2000 5y ago
Of course, but that still relies on the SMTP server's support. If a provider goes out of business or simply refuses to forward messages, an email address is still dead. That's why we'd need laws to regulate both scenarios: require operators to forward old accounts regardless of anything (including things like government sanctions) and set up a central email forwarder organization to take on email domains of defunct providers (and the legal framework to transfer domains to it). An ideal system would of course allow you to truly take your address with you to another provider and sever any link to your old one, just like you can with your phone number. The current semantics of email addresses don't allow that or require you to own your own domain name, which given the sad state of the business end of the DNS, isn't feasible on a large scale either.