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Leave Comcast Mail

What the Yahoo Migration Means and How to Protect Yourself

Preview:

Comcast’s upcoming shift of its legacy email service to Yahoo raises privacy and security concerns for anyone still using a Comcast.net address. Yahoo will analyze email content to serve targeted ads. They will also sell information about you to third parties. This terrible decision will be rolled out over the next year in groups. My group gets moved next month. Yahoo will resell you. They monitor all your emails, including receipts for whatever you purchase online. They will also steal all your contacts so they can spam them as well.

I don't want all my emails or any of my information going to Yahoo to process and sell. I don't want my computer exposed to the potential viruses in their ads. I don't want any information of mine exposed to whomever they will sell it to or who those people will resell it to.

Yahoo also does a terrible job with email. They have had multiple breaches because of their lack of security. Furthermore, they subscribe to many flaky email scanners and often get false positives and refuse to deliver legitimate email that everyone else delivers.

If you want to keep your Comcast.net email address, you'll need to go with the privacy-disrespecting and security-challenged Yahoo Mail platform. Yahoo Mail will work with Outlook or Thunderbird or most normal email clients, or you can use your browser and endure all their advertising.

Decision-making questions

This will affect different people in different ways. Let's examine some factors.

Do you actually use your Comcast Email? If not, it is easy.

If you don't use Comcast email but have a Comcast / Xfinity account, you are in luck. But go check your email account anyway and see if anyone you want to deal with does use it. You may find that Xfinity does. Perhaps there is someone else as well. Change your address with those people and be happy. You have almost no problem. Don't agree to Yahoo's terms, and cancel your account after you've checked and changed addresses for anyone who has sent email to your comcast.net address.

Is your Comcast.net address important? Do your friends and perhaps clients use it?

If you've been using Comcast as an essential email service, bummer. You have two choices:

1. Let Yahoo handle your mail, get advertising, and have them read all your mail, build a profile on you, and sell it to anyone, who can then resell it.
2. Get a new email address. This is obviously my recommendation. Even if you decide to get a new address, you'll need to keep the Comcast at Yahoo address for a year or so until you are not getting any desired emails going to that address. Then you can cancel that account. Do not expect them to delete your information.

Comcast is essential, but they haven't sent me anything yet.

You are in luck. Get your new address and begin the transition as soon as possible. Hopefully, you'll never have to deal with Yahoo.

How do you view your email, app, or browser?

There are two ways you might view your email. Some people, myself included, use a local program like EssentialPIM or Thunderbird to get, read, and store their email. Then on their phone, they have another app for checking and reading their mail. I use the Android app FairEmail.

Other people leave all their emails on the server and view them with their browser, not maintaining local storage at all. These optimistic people trust their email provider to keep everything.

If you maintain a local copy of your mail, you'll just add a new account in your email program with the new address, and your program will get the emails from both places. If you leave everything on the provider's server, you'll need to export them. Comcast is providing reasonable export functions to send your emails anywhere, so you should not lose anything regardless of your choice.

I'm going to get a new email address. What should I do? How about Gmail?

• You could go with a free service like AOL or Google and have them read your mail and sell your information to pay for their service. AOL is owned by Yahoo. That doesn't do you any good. Microsoft also offers a "free” service. They are probably bad, but not Yahoo bad.
• Pay for a service that doesn't sell you and have advertising. This is obviously my recommendation.
• Comcast offers a reasonable system to export your emails and contacts to your new service.

If you decide to get a new email address and pay a small fee for the service. Are you willing to risk going through this again?

• If you accept the email address of the new provider, then you run the risk of going through this whole thing again! This new provider could go out of business, sell their business, or just move in a different direction.
• You decide to buy your own domain so you'll always have your email address even if you switch email services.

My Recommendations

1. Buy your own domain

I recommend buying your own domain. A client of mine, Laura Johnson, just bought her own domain. Her business is Inner Office. She purchased the name inneroffice.us for $7/year. So she can be anything she wants @inneroffice.us. She can even have plenty of names in front of the inneroffice.us. I own steveshank.com, and my brother owns dennisshank.com.

Different top-level domains cost different amounts wholesale; .us is inexpensive. .com has a wholesale price of $10.44 a year, while .me is $19.88. Hover may give you a cheap first-year price but will show you the renewal price.

Here's my recommended process:

1. Use https://domainr.com to find a good email domain name that is available. If you find .com names difficult to get, consider .me or .us or some other top-level name. Your domain registrar will also allow you to search for names.
2. Choose an email service that is reasonable. I provide some options below.
3. Either use Cloudflare or your new email provider to buy and register your new name. Cloudflare is a reputable company that offers wholesale prices for domain registration. The advantage of Cloudflare is it will be the cheapest; they are very big and reputable. The advantage of your own service is that it'll keep everything in one place.
4. There are other reputable domain registrars you can use. I'm only recommending Cloudflare because it is reputable and cheap and is a stable business. I can also recommend hover.com. It is important to recognize that some vendors suck you in with a cheap first-year price, then jack up the price. Neither Cloudflare nor Hover does that.

2 Pay for your email service

Here are companies that respect your privacy. Will not display ads and will not sell your data or spy on you. I use a local email program called EssentialPIM, so I seldom use their web interface. Mozilla's Thunderbird is also a good option for a local program. I do not trust the NEW Outlook, but the old one is okay. If you prefer using your browser, all these services offer that as well.

Just as a simple rough estimate to help you understand these gigabyte things below, assume each gigabyte will hold about 10,000 emails. This assumes you don't have many huge attachments and pictures in your emails. Pictures and movies take a lot of space.

1. I use Runbox, which is a Norwegian company, and can definitely recommend them. I've used them for 3 years. They provide reliable service and provide excellent email support if needed. Pricing is $20/year for 2 GB storage and $35/year for 10 GB storage. If purchased in 3-year increments, those numbers are $50 and $85, so quite a savings.
2. Mailbox.org prices vary, but it is inexpensive. $40 a year for 10 GB
3. Fastmail.com: $60/year, 60 GB storage, 24/7 human tech support. Plenty of email addresses and many extra features.

Any of these should be fine. None of them encrypt your emails when they are sitting on their servers (at rest). All of these are serious about security and your privacy. They do not collect or sell your information. They will all work better than Yahoo as well. All three of these services provide a 30-day free trial period so you can test them out.

More Information.

• Comcast / Xfinity's own disclosure