Do you use Earthlink? Ohh. I'm so sorry.

Moonliner · 12-08-2006, 08:56 AM

Looks like Earthlink is going through some hard times.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techno nerdy news guy

Here is something I wish I were making up. A good friend of mine noticed last June a sudden and precipitous decline in his volume of incoming e-mail with the numbers dropping by 80-90 percent. Was he less popular, less interesting than before? Or maybe some Bayesian filter had been imposed by his ISP (Earthlink) to suddenly spare him completely from spam. No such luck.

The trend continued so my friend, who has long been in the networking business, himself, started running experiments. He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail.

Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink's mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn't bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn't mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain. The two groups affected are those who get their mail with an Earthlink-hosted domain and those with aliased e-mail addresses like my friend's Blackberry.

Were they thinking these thousands of affected customers simply wouldn't notice? And what about those customers whose livelihood depends on e-mail communication? There are both ethical and business questions here and Earthlink doesn't look good on either scale. Fortunately the company says it is installing new software and hopes to have the problem resolved before the end of the year. Lucky us.

This sort of ISP dissembling happens more often than many of us might guess as companies play the odds and pray that their faults aren't noticed. These mistakes, by the way, typically aren't actionable thanks to our blindly clicking on those Terms of Service agreements that we never read. In Earthlink's case, if they don't deliver your e-mail, well that's just tough.

JWBear · 12-08-2006, 11:13 AM

I haven't had any emails go missing. <shrug>

I've never understood the Earthlink bashing that seems to be trendy in IT circles. I’ve had their service for years and love it!

Snowflake · 12-08-2006, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWBear

I haven't had any emails go missing. <shrug>

I've never understood the Earthlink bashing that seems to be trendy in IT circles. I’ve had their service for years and love it!

I also had earthlink for years and had no issues. My roomie hates earthlink and for the sake of keeping the peace, I switched to sbcglobal.

Moonliner · 12-08-2006, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWBear

I haven't had any emails go missing. <shrug>

I've never understood the Earthlink bashing that seems to be trendy in IT circles. I’ve had their service for years and love it!

I'm just curious, how sure can you be sure that you are not missing emails?

Do you have a gmail/hotmail/yahoomail account you can test with?

katiesue · 12-08-2006, 12:44 PM

I haven't noticed a lower volume but then again I don't really use my three earthlink addy's I currently have set up for much. 99% of my e-mail goes to my yahoo account. Now I'm curious to test it out. Maybe I've won the nigerian lottery and didn't get the confirmaiton? Maybe my dream date has desperately been trying to conact me to no avail?

JWBear · 12-08-2006, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moonliner

I'm just curious, how sure can you be sure that you are not missing emails?

Do you have a gmail/hotmail/yahoomail account you can test with?

I've gotten all the emails from the people I correspond with regularly, and I haven't seen a decrease in the amount of spam caught by the spam filters (in fact, just the opposite). If there is a problem, it either hasn't affected me, or it has only affected the spam emails. If it's the later case... I couldn't care less.

Sub la Goon · 12-08-2006, 09:16 PM

All my friends with money in Nigeria seem to be reaching me just fine.

katiesue · 12-08-2006, 10:31 PM

I tried sending 5 e-mails from my work account to each of my three earthlink addresses and all three sets of 5 arrived safely.

12-08-2006, 11:13 AM	#2
JWBear Worn Romantic Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Long Beach California Posts: 8,435	I haven't had any emails go missing. <shrug> I've never understood the Earthlink bashing that seems to be trendy in IT circles. I’ve had their service for years and love it! __________________ Unrestrained frivolity will lead to the downfall of modern society.
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12-08-2006, 12:44 PM	#5
katiesue Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: San Diego Posts: 4,678	I haven't noticed a lower volume but then again I don't really use my three earthlink addy's I currently have set up for much. 99% of my e-mail goes to my yahoo account. Now I'm curious to test it out. Maybe I've won the nigerian lottery and didn't get the confirmaiton? Maybe my dream date has desperately been trying to conact me to no avail? __________________ My life is so exciting I can hardly stand it.
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12-08-2006, 09:16 PM	#7
Sub la Goon Ride me! Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: The line forms here... Posts: 326	All my friends with money in Nigeria seem to be reaching me just fine. __________________ You roll the dice, you move your mice.
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12-08-2006, 10:31 PM	#8
katiesue Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: San Diego Posts: 4,678	I tried sending 5 e-mails from my work account to each of my three earthlink addresses and all three sets of 5 arrived safely. __________________ My life is so exciting I can hardly stand it.
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