The Cox To Yahoo Email Nightmare &
The Arrogance of Those Who
Control Our Digital Lives
On April 3, 2022, The Dispatches posted an article titled, "How Capitalism Destroyed Email and Made It Better, Or Get Your Domain Names Right Here, Right Now. Red Hot — Fresh Off the Server." My thesis was that the Verizon emails accounts, which became Yahoo email accounts, and then became AOL accounts, foretold a future where free and/or ad free email accounts will disappear over time. The suggestion I made then, and still adhere to now, is that people who rely on email for much of their personal and professional communications should purchase their own domain name, and have that domain setup as an email account with a hosting provider, such as GoDaddy or IONOS. Having one's own email domain name projects a certain professional panache that simply "SomeGuy[@]aol.com" can never portray. Plus, it puts the customer in control of one's own email, which can never be taken away by the whim of some unseen force.
The problem the telecos have with providing email to their customers, free or otherwise, is that email is no longer simply an add-on to an Internet connection offering. It is costly to maintain the tremendous amount of server space now required. Email can be technically problematic, and thus a cadre of tech support personnel are necessary to keep customers' email flowing in and out of the servers. Moreover, given the real threat to email accounts brought about by all the security problems consumers and vendors must now confront, hosting email can be both a technical and a legal risk that companies whose primary raison d'être is to provide telephonic communications, cable television, and/or Internet access will — with sound reasoning — eschew. Thus, Verizon was one of the first communication giants to abandon the email business altogether in the wake of two massive cyberattacks on its email assets, Yahoo and AOL.
As is often the case, the predictions this old battle scarred geek make
do eventually come to pass. The latest telco, cable, and Internet
provider to give up its email business is Cox Communications. This
was not an impersonal news story to me. Many of my clients in
South LA county are customers of Cox, as Cox is a major provider of
cable television and Internet access here. I have been actively
involved in this transition from Cox email to Yahoo email. So, I
can say from personal experience the transition has been quite a
nightmare for some of my clients, and thusly for me.
The transition has not occurred overnight. Cox announced its transition in early 2024, and is still in the process, as of this writing. One constant problem with the transition has been the proliferation of spammers using the process as a way to ensnare Cox customers into divulging personal information not needed to make the transition;. and, in some cases, to infect Cox customers' machines. A search on "Spam related to Cox to Yahoo email transition," or any other related phrase, will return a long list of abuses Cox customers have been subjected to. The screenshot to the right is the result of such a search performed recently on Google.
July 7, 2022, a Dispatch was posted titled, "The anatomy of an address There is more than what meets the eye." In this post, I stressed the critical importance of carefully examining any URL before it is clicked on. Many of the spam emails that have proliferated since the Cox to Yahoo transition began have contained links that have no relationship to Cox or Yahoo. These bogus phishing exercises have caused more than one user untold anguish as their Cox email accounts have been compromised. In one extreme case, the crooks behind a Cox related phishing attack had completely disabled the user's Cox email account, and according to Cox tech support, had set up email forwarding on the account. It was more than a week before the mess was straightened out. In the meantime, a complete wiping of the computer's hard drive and reinstallation of Windows, along with all the other applications the client uses, was necessary to ensure that computer was no longer infected.
When Verizon.net email customers were transitioned to Yahoo, and then AOL, beginning in 2017, customers whose preferred email client was Microsoft Outlook could no longer use Outlook. I am well experienced in and quite skilled at setting up Outlook in many different environments. But I have not once been successful at getting Outlook to work for clients who still have valid Verizon.net addresses connected to Yahoo mail servers. These users are required to access their mail at the Verizon address by logging on to the AOL webmail client. In researching the Cox to Yahoo transistion, I came across many Cox customers who had expressed tremendous frustration when they had discovered that their Cox email no longer worked with Outlook. Given my experience with Verizon customers, I was not surprised that Cox users were now unable to access their email through Outlook.
Indeed, my first attempt at getting Cox email to work with Outlook once that account was transitioned to Yahoo had failed. However, once I had manually reconfigured the email server settings to the suggested Yahoo settings, the email that had been sitting on Yahoo servers since that customer had been transitioned began to stream into my clients Inbox within Outlook. Older emails; sent emails; contacts; the entire panoply of her Cox email was now contained within Outlook. Needless to say, I was quite surprised and pleased that I had the technical acumen to meet my client's expectations. Nevertheless, I was a bit confused over all the hand wringing I had encountered on the Internet about this. Some of Cox customers who had posted their problems with Cox email through Outlook seemed to know how to configure email server settings.
The next attempt at this feat of technical wizardry that I alone seemed to possess failed at the offset. Another client had been fooled by a spam email and that Cox email account no longer worked at all. A call to Cox tech support resulted in the client being informed that the client had not yet been transitioned. The email the client had responded to was bogus.
The next attempt at transitioning a Cox customer to Yahoo was most enlightening. This third client was a business associate of the first client whose transition using Outlook was so successful. I was confident of a similar success story. In short, I did get the customer transitioned to Yahoo mail. The Yahoo webmail with all its vulgar ads did work. But try and try again, this time I could not get Outlook to work. I was stymied until the client's wife said, "Maybe she has a different computer." And indeed, client number 1 did have a different computer, but not so much as a different computer, but client #1 had Windows 11 and Office 365. The system that failed was Windows 10 and Office 2016.
This client for whom Outlook had failed knew the machine was hopelessly out of date, and the present situation was the prompt he had needed to make the upgrade. With a shiny new HP business class notebook running the most up to date version of Windows 11, and with a new installation of Office (now called Microsoft) 365, I was able to manually configure the email server settings to those of Yahoo. It should be noted that when I simply typed in the client's Cox email address and password, the mail still did not work. The server settings were automatically configured to Cox email settings. Thus, a manual reconfiguration of the email server settings to those of Yahoo is what was needed to make Cox.net email now work with Outlook. And I was relieved.
I understand the business logic of Cox no longer wanting to host email for all the reasons listed above, and probably some I hadn't thought of. The situation Cox users find themselves in is, howver, a perfect illustration of the callous disregard so many of these corporate monoliths have towards the needs of their customers. I don't think anyone at Cox considered the pain its many customers, who regularly use Outlook to access their email, have experienced — or will experience — due to this transition. Nor do Cox support personnel seem to have a clue about the technical issues that I have discussed herein. I suppose the Cox people cannot really be expected to advise folks who are now Yahoo customers on how to configure Yahoo email. In its pro forma notice about the transition sent to its customers, there is no mention of Outlook or the need to change server settings. The message is only about Yahoo webmail.
What is disturbing to me, however, is how the notice begins. It is the height of callous arrogance.
To ensure you have the best email experience, we’re transitioning your cox.net email service and associated support to Yahoo Mail.
You would think that they would at least apologize "for the inconvenience."
If you are a Cox customer reading this, and you can't call me, my hope is that you can find a reputable and knowledge tech who can help with the transition. Moreover, if you are still using older Microsoft software, this is one more reason why it is time to consider an upgrade. Or, if you are a Cox email customer who is now been transitioned to Yahoo email, be subjected to Yahoo's relentless webmail advertising.
Gerald Reiff
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