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New email policy

I was just notified of the new email policy. The way I read the notification, it appears that I have to log in to Verizon email regularly to keep my account active. I use my email daily but only that my safari mail. Am I going to be in danger of having my account deleted?

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Jwhk814

Today I received an alert message that Verizon would delete our Verizon.net account if the email account was inactive for 180 days and could not be reactivated!

Why we need to use Verizon's Internet services?

We better switch to other internet service provider!

This is absurb!

davidpeab

I received the same threatening message. I need to know if I am still considered as using my Verizon.net email account when I am accessing it through Mac Mail. I have hundreds of contacts, personal, commercial, and professional that rely on my Verizon.net email. Will my use of Mac Mail be considered "Accessing my Verizon.net account" or do I have to log onto this ill designed, slow and spam filled site just to check my email, when I would rather simply check my email directly from my Mac, in order to keep the Verizon.net email account for which I am paying Verizon?

ElizabethS

This is something only Verizon can answer. Please visit our Support page for a variety of ways to contact Verizon, including “Ask Verizon,” our virtual chat agent, and customer support phone numbers.

SidR

I got the confusing email from Verizon below. I don't understand whether it applies to accessing verizon.net with Outlook, or a smartphone. I don't normally login to webmail.verizon.com. There is no reason for me to do so. However, I do use Outlook, and my smartphone to access my verizon.net email. Is Verizon going to delete my verizon.net email account because I don't use webmail.verizon.com? Way to go Verizon with confusing the hell out of your customers by sending a cryptic email!

Here's the text of the email:

We wanted to let you know that we changed our email policy.

With this change, if you haven’t accessed your verizon.net email account in over 180 days, your email account will be deleted and cannot be reactivated. This change only impacts your verizon.net email account. Your access to myverizon.com will not be affected.

If this change applies to you and you’d like to keep your email account active, simply log in towebmail.verizon.com from a computer and check your email within the next 30 days. Any verizon.net email accounts that remain inactive after 30 days of this notice will be deleted, including the email address.

Please visit verizon.com/emailpolicy to review our updated policy.

Thanks for being a loyal Verizon customer.

Ensure Verizon emails reach your inbox by adding verizon-notification@verizon.com to your “safe” email list. Your email or Internet provider can provide instructions on how it works.

This email has been sent from an auto-notification system that cannot accept incoming email.

SidR

It's better to use gmail or outlook.com than Verizon.net

SidR

I have the same question. I don't login to webmail.verizon.net. I use Outlook or my smartphone. Will my account be deleted too? Verizon is confusing me.

SidR

I sometimes login to my Verizon email though Yahoo email. Am I considered to login to my Verizon.net account through Yahoo or do I have to specifically login to webmail.verizon.net?

Justin46

There is a link to their new policy in the email. If you go read what is there you will see very clearly that accessing a verizon.net email address using a client like Outlook will satisfy the access requirment.

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV: Extreme HD, Internet: 50/50, Digital Voice
VMS Enhanced Service: 1 server, 2 clients
Keller, TX 76248 (VHO 1)

NJSports

Yes, it was very confusing. Thank you for posting your message. I read somones reply, but I don't use Outlook, I use Window LIve Mail. Does that count? In addition, my husband has an account which he has never logged in with. However, this account is needed. So what if it is never logged into, we are still paying the bill for Verizon Internet. If we stop paying, then delete it. Good Grief.

pfps

I too was confused by the message.

All that was needed to make the message clear was some indication that if you read mail via POP to verizon.net then your account was not inactive. Of course, if you read this message, then your account was not inactive. So anyone who read the message did not have to do anything, maybe.

So who needs to do anything and also received the message so that they know to do something? Noone? I don't think so. Users who have their Verizon email forwarded may need to interact directly with Verizon email. Or at least that appears to be the case. Maybe. What is the real situation? Verizon, as usual, isn't telling.

By the way, the Email Inactivity Policy is certainly incorrect. Just logging into my POP email client cannot be adequate. I might have it set to only contact Verizon when I tell it to. I might even not access Verizon email through my POP email client at all. What counts has to be logging into Verizon email from my POP email client.

The Email Retention Policy is also messed up. All Email will be retained indefinitely. All trash Email and spam Email will be deleted quickly. Are these exceptions to the general policy? Yes, I expect so, but it would have been much clearer to make these be explicitly so marked.

You have to wonder who Verizon gets to write these documents. Perhaps Google could get away with this. After all most gmail users don't pay Google anything. However, most Verizon email customers are paying Verizon quite a bit of money for a service that includes Verizon email. Some of that money could be put towards decent communication with us.

Justin46

OK, one last time.... Smiley Happy

Go read the web page linked in the email. It very clearly says if you use an email client at least once every 180 days (6 months!) your email account will not be deleted. Using any email client will satisfy the requirement; some computer email clients: MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Outlook Express (usable on Windows/XP only, does anybody really still use Windows/XP?), Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc., etc., etc. The net is, any program that you run on your computer, tablet, or phone that sends and/or receives email from your verizon.net account(s) satisfies the requirement, as long as the account is accessed at least once each 6 months. Plus of course if you visit the webmail page, you have accessed your email account.

Why is Verizon doing this? I don't know for sure, but I bet it is to recover a hugh amount of "dead" hard drive space and account definition space on their email servers. If you are like me, you have multiple verizon.net email accounts - I have 3 for myself and one for my wife. We do check each of my email accounts every day, but I suspect many people with multiple accounts don't, and I think Verizon is trying to remove the unused ones from their systems. An example might be a family with multiple accounts for the parents and the kids, then when the kids leave home they may get their own accounts (with Verizon or someone else) and those original emails are never used again, just deadweight sitting on the Verizon email servers.

Once again, go read the web page linked from the email you received, especially the bullets at the end.

__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV: Extreme HD, Internet: 50/50, Digital Voice
VMS Enhanced Service: 1 server, 2 clients
Keller, TX 76248 (VHO 1)

FedUpBoston

@ElizabethS wrote:
This is something only Verizon can answer. Please visit our Support page for a variety of ways to contact Verizon, including “Ask Verizon,” our virtual chat agent, and customer support phone numbers.

Thanks to another poster, here is the info that Verizon could have included in their email, but thought we should go searching for (my emphasis added):

"Email Inactivity Policy
Email accounts without activity for 180 days will be considered inactive. Inactive Email accounts will be permanently deleted in their entirety, without notice, including Email addresses, all Email, and personal Email folders. Inactive Email accounts may not be reactivated and you will NOT be able to recover Email addresses, deleted Emails or personal Email folders.
For the purposes of this policy, a mailbox will be considered "active" if you do any of the following at least once every 180 days:
 Log into Verizon Webmail at http://webmail.verizon.com
 Log into your POP Email client (such as Outlook Express)
 Log into MyVerizon and (i) open or send at least one Email message or (ii) set up automatic forwarding of your Email."

Sorry Elizabeth (who may be Verizon or doesn't want to admit) - I suspect I'm not the only one reluctant to wait on interminable hold, passed from person to person to find the one sentient being who can answer my question. The good news is, the link in the original email does confirm that I don't need to go to your email to keep my account alive.

Nunzio2

I've gotten the same ambiguous, and threatening email from Verizon. I say threatening because the consequence stated is the loss of the email address.

It's not clear what they mean. Does accessing email via Mac Mail suffice? Or is Verizon saying that if you don't use their website directly, you will lose your address(s) with them? And what about aliases?

What are they up to if not to drive more business to their site?

somegirl

Read. Yes, accessing with a POP3 client counts. This is stated multiple times in this thread and also in the Email Policy linked from the original email.

pfps

"accessing with a POP3 client" is not stated in the Verizon email policy.

What is stated in the Verizon email policy is "Log into your POP Email
client (such as Outlook Express)". This is subtly different, as some
people, such as myself, don't have our POP email clients set to
automatically access our Verizon email accounts, but yet we do something
that can be considered to be signing in to the client.

In my case, it is obvious to those of us who understand what is going on
with email clients and servers that just using my email client doesn't
count. It may not be obvious to those who do not completely understand the
distinction between email clients and servers.

For users who only read their Verizon email after it has been forwarded to
some other email server, it will be harder to see the difference between
signing in to their email client and accessing Verizon email. These users
may be unpleasantly surprised when their account is deleted, even though
they have been happily reading their Verizon email and even sending email
using their Verizon account.

Nunzio2

Thank you for your response. Yes I understand the difference between email client software and the server level of email. I also understand that Verizon has instructed its customer service reps to state that the portal must be accessed every 30 days. Then upon further questioniong, they will tell you that it's 180 days. Obviously Verizon is attempting to drive more business to its horrid portal. You know the one I mean, the one that can barely filter SPAM compared to a client like say Mac Mail for example. Why on earth would anyone prefer their portal for normal business on a desktop device?

I any event, accessing the portal, as far as I can tell, is merely signing in. This means that one needs to merely sign in one every 180 days and then sign out. Done!

I'm wondering if Verizon also intends to warn customers when they are dangerously close to having email accounts terminated for non-portal access??? If the answer is 'yes' to this, then it will be an even easier matter to deal with.

Nunzio2

I just spoke with a Verizon tech support person by telephone, actually a Verizon landline, and was told that my POP3 client (Mac Mail) would NOT count as access. In other words, VZ is trying to drive business to its website by requireing its use under threat of termination of email accounts. Does that sound like a customer friendly, warm fuzzy company, the kind they try to represent themselves as on their advertising, Twitter pages, etc.? It doesn't to me. It sound much more like a company that will do anything without concern for the consequences to its users.

Donkster

I also talked to a Verizon service rep via their Live Chat, and he/she told me that using a POP log in would NOT count as an official log-in. I would have to visit Verizon.com and actually log in there - or lose my account.

This mis-information is very aggravating on top of the threating-ish email warning.

Why couldn't they simply send the warning to people with email accounts that "haven't" been accessed in months? I feel they want to eliminate their email service like they (basically) eliminated their free customer server space.

Unfortunately the price never decreases when they take away features that were there when we subscribed.

JiminMd

I called Verizon today about this policy. I use Gmail to access my verizon mail. After two long conversations with two different reps, one of them sent me something that says access via "SMTP, POP or Webmail" is okay. The rep told me "Webmail" includes services like Yahoo and Gmail. But she would not give me anything in writing that confirms this. So the heck with Verizon. It's just the latest reason to drop it. Verizon doesn't care about customers until it thinks they might leave.

Bill442

Just saw the announcement that Verizon will de-activate e mail accounts if the accounts haven't been accessed once every six months. Does access include downloading via pop accounts? Or do we now have to actually log in to verizon.net and go to the webmail account? If the latter, what a total pain in the neck!

mfizzy

Exempt from the 180 rule are: Yahoo accounts, access via a mail cleint, accounts that are forwarded or have been forwarded in the last 180 days

viafax999

Do we get a reduction in monthly charges for removal of the email account - I've never used in in 5 years.

tns2

@viafax999 wrote:
Do we get a reduction in monthly charges for removal of the email account - I've never used in in 5 years.

Smiley LOL SURE,THe same discount for the amount they charged that you got for the prior retirement of the Personal Web Page service and USENET(NEWSGROUP) servers.

All these services are considered free extras, with no obligation for them to continue them in the future.

markiwright@verizon.net

I just spoke to Verizon rep and they don't have anything other that that text so are as confused as us.... my reading is should be OK if email client is logging in but I guess seems we will not know for sure..... until 180days.

Also no mention of sub accounts used for just FiOS TV online.... so assuming OK

Lots of assumptions

Nilsa_VZ

Change to Verizon.net Email Policies:

The Verizon.net Email Policies have been removed from verizon.com/emailpolicy, and replaced with the notice below:

We no longer offer verizon.net email service, and have previously notified all verizon.net email customers of the need to immediately migrate their email to the AOL platform (to maintain their verizon.net email address) or a third party platform. Please see the Frequently Asked Questions at verizon.com/email for additional information.

All migrations must be completed before December 5, 2017.

After this date, any remaining verizon.net email accounts will be subject to deletion and will not be accessible in any way. This means:

Any verizon.net email addresses not migrated to the AOL platform before December 5, 2017 will no longer be available for use
All verizon.net email, calendar and address book content not migrated to AOL or a third party before December 5, 2017 will be deleted from our systems

Verizon.net email customers who have previously chosen Yahoo as their portal partner are not impacted by this change and may continue to maintain their verizon.net email address on the Yahoo platform, subject to their Terms of Service with Yahoo.

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