Why you should ditch your internet provider’s email – and how we can help

Updated May 2020:

Over the years we’ve written various articles about AT&T/Yahoo email being plagued by account security issues, bothersome ads in their webmail interface, forced password resets, spam messages sent to user’s contacts and more. The revelation that over 500 million Yahoo accounts have been compromised in recent years leads us to once again advise people to stop using AT&T/Yahoo Mail, and switch to using a more secure and reliable email provider such as Gmail.

If your email address ends in @att.net, @sbcglobal.net, @nvbell.net, or @prodigy.net, the advice above includes you – since Yahoo provides the email and web content services for AT&T Internet customers. We’ve had several customers over the years permanently lose access to their AT&T/Yahoo email due to the lack of security of the service.

In May 2020 AT&T once again changed their login procedure, and began blocking use of the website if you use an ad blocker.

An important security option for online accounts is 2-step verification – neither AT&T/Yahoo or Charter/Spectrum email accounts offer the option. Therefore we recommend that you ditch your internet provider’s email service and switch to Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Outlook Mail.

If you’ve got an Android smartphone, you should already have a Gmail address associated with the Google account required for your phone. If you don’t already have Gmail, it’s easy to get a free address and setup your account – and we can help.

Switching email providers can be a hassle. But we can setup the initial change for you, and give follow-up guidance on how to systematically inform business correspondence of the change over time. We’ve got a step-by-step procedure that includes (but not limited to):

Discontinuing AT&T/Yahoo email:

• Change password & account security questions (if not done since 9/22/16)
• Add account recovery information
• Backup your contacts
• Check forwarding options

Discontinuing Charter.com/Spectrum email:

• Backup your contacts
• Forward email to new provider

Gmail Setup:

• Setup account, recovery and security information
• Import Yahoo contacts, and mail (if applicable)
• Send “new email” message informing your contacts of the change
• Setup smartphone app (if applicable)

Follow-up:

• Log into accounts that use email address as username and change – AppleID, Amazon, Netflix, etc.
• Update account information with businesses over time – financial institutions, medical, insurance, subscriptions, eCommerce, etc.

If you’d like our professional help in switching email providers, please contact Mark Cobb to schedule an appointment. It takes about an hour, and can be done via remote support in some cases or on-site.

Side note: AOL has security issues of its own and we recommend ditching their email service as well, or minimally setting up 2-Step Verification for access to your account. However, AOL is a bit more complex to move away from because many AOL users have become familiar with AOL Desktop software. Switching to a new email address would also require switching to using a new web browser other than AOL Desktop.

Also read: Are you tired of your Internet provider’s email “service”?

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