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My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#1
Not that this is of concern to any of you, I understand.

After over 22 years of honored service my oldest mailbox is about to close. Today they sent me a communication in which they inform all users of their impending switch to premium e-mail accounts. Free e-mails will be no more, and those accounts which will not make the "upgrade" shall be shut down and all e-mails within them shall be lost. I appreciate the warning, gives me time to react. I do not appreciate that the warning comes only 5 days before the event!
I got 20+ years worth of e-mail to move... that makes several hundreds of e-mails to forward to a different mailbox, and a 2 digits figure worth of accounts (linked to the closing mailbox) that I have got to re-route before I lose access.
This very account on LT is one of them, btw. I am about to change it.

I managed to move a fraction of the e-mails before strange errors began to popup. Looks like I have hit some unspoken threshold, some limit, on the e-mails that could be received (or maybe sent, or even both) before my sudden activity would get tagged as suspicious and blocked. How nice...
As a matter of fact, for today I am done already. Or "for the moment", I do not know. There is no telling when this pseudo-ban will lift.

Speaking of which, I am wondering if instead of forwarding my e-mails to a different mailbox I could download them on my PC. And upload them on the new mailbox at a later date, conveniently, little by little without incurring in bans.
But to do this I need one of those e-mail clients, like Outlook (the only one I know of). Problem is: I never used one such program, not even Outlook.
How do they work?
Are they safe?
Can they really download my e-mails to my computer and can they really upload them to a different mailbox at a later date?
What problems can I run into if I attempt this?

I will appreciate any insight or help you can give me.
Sincerely,

-fox
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#2
Fox, I haven't used it in forever, but Gmail has/had a feature where you could hook into older mail services and download all the emails from them. I used it for Yahoo a number of years ago, when I made the switch from Yahoo. (Gmail is superior to Yahoo's garbage in every way)

If you're not interested in using Gmail, that info won't be of much use to you, but I figured I ought to offer it just in case.

What email service are/were you using, anyway?
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#3
I personally have multiple non-standard mailboxes, one based on my own last name (firstname@lastname.com basically :V), and another few based on the Goat.Army DNS I have.

These are collected by Gmail via their servers, and I also use gmail on my phone to collect both my gmail, my work email, and some of my goat mails.

Personally I have never found fault with Gmail, the apps and tools are good enough for all things I have required, and they provide a good enough level of security for day to day stuff.

If one were to want a properly secure mailbox, one would get their own DNS, setup a mail server, and force all mails to come in over TLS secured connections.
Then at least you can ensure that nobody else is going to read your mail except you. (at least on your side of the connection)
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WebGL Spaceships and Trails
<Cuisinart8> apparently without the demon driving him around Silver has the intelligence of a botched lobotomy patient ~ Mar 04 2020
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#6
Hi all,
I apologize for replying only now.
Yesterday, after changing the e-mail address linked to this account, I was unable to log back in because the reactivation e-mail would not show up. Looks like it appeared this morning, more than 20 hours late (according to the e-mail's Sent timestamp). Besides, I have had lots to do in the meantime.

Now back to my issue.
Being silenced and rather short on time -yesterday-, I was forced to take action on my own. I opted to use the Mozilla Thunderbird, arguably the best mailbox client after Microsoft Outlook (with the non-small caveat that Outlook is payware, Thunderbird if freeware).

I am awfully new to this stuff, but Thunderbird appears to be easy to use. At least easy enough for me to learn how to make a local copy (on my PC) of all my e-mails only minutes after the installation. It even managed to get a hold of 3 e-mails from Ubisoft that I never could forward to anywhere because the mailbox would raise some database error (being choked full of important data I had resorted to take screenshots of such e-mails -- for safekeeping).

In the few hours that I spent with Thunderbird I understood how terribly slow and prone to errors is the management of a mailbox via browser. I see now why these mailbox clients exist and thrive. The reasons are simple: they get the job done, fast and reliably. Plus, they offer a slew of convenient accessory options that you are not given by the browser interface.
I have downloaded from-, archived in local-, identified and deleted doubles of-, and reorganized across multiple e-mail accounts-, something short of 2300 e-mails in little more than 4 (four) hours!
Before posting here yesterday, while doing the same stuff via browser, I could barely move 110 e-mails in 2 hours (and then something happened: as if a ban was issued on me because I generated too much traffic). Most of the time was spent checking that everything had reached its destination and in a readable format (because when you move lot of e-mails sh*t starts happening for real). The rest of the time was wasted in wait that the stuff would actually be moved from one mailbox to another. It was excruciatingly slow.

With a mailbox client, instead, everything was done almost as easily as moving files from a folder to another. Now, mailbox clients have been around for ages, and I feel like I just discovered the hot water. Nonetheless, my change in user experience has been dramatically shifted towards the good end. After the stunning results of yesterday I do not see myself returning to use the browser interface to manage my e-mails.

Now I have lots of time left to search for those welcoming e-mails with newly registered account informations. I have to find the accounts linked to the closing mailbox, log into them and the re-route them on a new e-mail address.


@ Talvieno:
I use Gmail very little. I just had multiple accounts already when I made my Gmail one. Google knows who I am only because I got a smartphone, otherwise I would have no need for a Gmail account, you see.
That said, the few times I relied on Gmail it has not failed me. I ought to explore its features more.


-fox
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#8
Cody wrote:
Sat Dec 16, 2017 9:36 am
I used Thunderbird for quite a few years, and always liked it. Can't recall why I switched to my ISP's webmail, but lately I've been thinking of switching back to Thunderbird. Thing is, I believe Mozilla have stopped development and are looking to offload it.
Hi Cody,
perhaps it was because, when you wanted to compose a new message, a mailbox client (or at least the current Thunderbird) cannot access the text-editing features (and emoticons) exposed by the browser interface?
(Open...
On the other hand, with a mailbox client, you can compose the text in HTML -- which is not always supported via browser.
HTML opens up a world of possibilities for impagination, if one is so inclined.
... closed)


From what I understand Thunderbird's development will not cease. Mozilla plans to outsource its development to another organization, while continuing to "sponsor" the project themselves.
Here are 2 comments of interest from the blog I linked:
A wrote on May 9, 2017 at 14:13:

I went through the article and I now understand what will happen, but I do not understand why. Why Thunderbird can no longer be developed by Mozilla?
Ian Thomas wrote on May 9, 2017 at 14:25:

See the links to Mitchell Baker’s posts for detailed reasons, but it basically boils down to Mozilla having limited resources (time, money, executive attention) and not considering Thunderbird as important for their mission as Firefox and other projects are.

A big part of this split that has already been announced is that Thunderbird will no longer share a codebase with Firefox. That allows Firefox developers to make larger changes faster and means Thunderbird developers won’t have to spend time fixing problems created by changes in Firefox. It also means that the code bases will increasingly diverge.

Regards :wave:
-fox
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#9
fox wrote:
Sun Dec 17, 2017 10:18 am
... perhaps it was because, when you wanted to compose a new message, a mailbox client (or at least the current Thunderbird) cannot access the text-editing features (and emoticons) exposed by the browser interface?
I don't recall any problems with text-editing features, and I never use emoticons anyway. Perhaps I'll give it another go.
Oolite Naval Attaché
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#10
If intended to sent fully html mails, I would normally build the html manually in text, then place it into a mail verbatim and deal with it that way. Neither web, nor mail clients, have enough control over the html to be worth fiddling with.

But then, I am at least a step past power user in that scenario. :V
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WebGL Spaceships and Trails
<Cuisinart8> apparently without the demon driving him around Silver has the intelligence of a botched lobotomy patient ~ Mar 04 2020
console.log(`What's all ${this} ${Date.now()}`);
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Re: My historic mailbox is about to shut down

#12
Victor Tombs wrote:
Sun Dec 17, 2017 6:55 pm
I use Thunderbird, fox. I even went as far as making a donation to its continued development and will probably make additional donations. :angel:

Edit: To be more precise I'm using Thunderbird Beta.
Hi Victor,
the more I use Thunderbird the more I like it and now I coordinate all my mailboxes with it -- Pretty handy.
I have also substituted the default notification sound with the Chirp from the Samsung phones (this one). Now my PC tweets everytime I get a new e-mail. Lovely.

My old mailbox is officially closed as of 00:00 of 19 Dec 2017, although it is still accessible -- but empty.
Tried sending an e-mail to it hours ago, it has not arrived (yet). Also, for some reason Thunderbird cannot connect to it even though the supplied Username and Password allow me to connect via browser.
I am no expert of mailing services but I imagine that a Browser and a Client use two separate communication channels (else, I do not explain myself the vast disparity in performance and reliability), and right now the non-browser channel is down.


-fox

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