What would happen if your email provider closed overnight?

[Rytron]

Hi.

I'm curious as to what would happen if your email provider closed overnight. If you were given notice that it was closing in a few weeks or months you could edit your online account associated with that email address but if it suddenly went - there'd be chaos. To change passwords (as is recommended be done fairly frequently) - usually they send an email to you - also needed if you forgot your password - you see the problem straight away.

I know this scenario is extremely unlikely but maybe not impossible - especially if you used a lesser known email provider.

Any thoughts from you guys on this?

Thanks.

[buzzingrobot]

Well... some people would be really annoyed.

Don't know how many of my online accounts might be affected. I doubt there's much verification of an address after registration.

Mail providers do go out of business, just like any other business. Gmail's there, for example, because Google makes money using it for ads. We have no guarantee that Gmail will be there forever.

Just shows that it's smart to keep local copies of your own mail, at least the stuff whose loss you can't risk. I'll admit I don't do that. (And I once accidentally zapped a Gmail account and 40,000 messages.) But, I do use two mail providers, and a copy of all mail to the account I rely on is forwarded to the the other account, where it sits on their servers, just in case.

[SeijiSensei]

Nothing. I maintain my own mail servers.

[QIII]

I think the OP was asking about normal ​people, SeijiSensei.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

you know you have too much time on your hands when you run your own mail server

[SeijiSensei]

I think the OP was asking about normal ​people, SeijiSensei.

you know you have too much time on your hands when you run your own mail server

I've run mail servers for twenty years now. Most of that time was sunk in the past more or less except for fighting spam. The new batch that has appeared over the past year is carefully designed not to trip any of SpamAssassin's rules and has been especially difficult to trap.

[sandyd]

not a ubuntu support request - moved to the cafe

[PaulW2U]

If you were given notice that it was closing in a few weeks or months you could edit your online account associated with that email address but if it suddenly went - there'd be chaos.

I have a number of domains that I use for e-mail and all could be reconfigured to point to a new provider quite quickly. All of my mail is also forwarded to Gmail as a backup and I have several local backups of various IMAP providers I have used over the years.

The best backup is, where appropriate, to extract important information and store elsewhere and in another format. I've lost a lot of mail over the years but it has never caused me a problem but YMMV as they say.

you know you have too much time on your hands when you run your own mail server

I wish I had the expertise and confidence to actually run my own mail server.

[s.fox]

To get it back fully on topic...

I do agree it'd be chaos, but I also wonder if the provider would be legally bound to give some sort of duty of care. On the other hand laws are different in every country.

[Rytron]

not a ubuntu support request - moved to the cafe

Sorry Sandy. I was unsure of the correct place to post the thread. Thanks for remedying this.