Why can't Email Addresses be portable?

Franklett186

Hi

I'm a Newbie to this Forum and I'm seeking some help in connection with Email Address portability. 

I realise now that they are not portable but why?

At one time, Land Line Phone Numbers and Mobile Numbers were never portable. As times have changed, they have now both become portable. Why can't Email Addresses follow suit?

Can anybody advise appropriately?

Thank you.

Isthisforreal99

What do you mean 'portable'? Plenty are like Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo and gmail. If you mean a BT or Sky one for example then it's hosted on their own servers and part of the T&C's is you remain a customer, i.e. you don't 'own' that address.

So there are plenty alternatives.

gm0

Some "domain names" and their associated mail records are portable and have been for decades. Technically this is not missing from the internet.

The question is a commercial one - who to buy from. As the free version of all this became unsustainable. Too much traffic. Spam etc. People don't want to keep providing it to you after you leave them commercially. The exceptions are the webmail ad funded crowd - so MSFT, Google Gmail. Yahoo, AOL as was. Provide permanent "free" email. Until they don't.

All the blueyonder, older outfits like voda/demon, bt stuff - broadband account linked to your paid for internet access does not in general tend to be portable. Pay use. Leave. The end. Gone (after a delay). Some of these did sell domain registration so you could have your own domain and not use @bt etc. And take it with you when you go. This was available - although I did not buy it - when I got my first dial up internet in 1992.

But an internet domain and ID you own yourself can be "repointed" to a temporary - broadband linked one or a webmail account. You do that with whoever is the domain registrar you have used to get the domain. App or webportal.

I used to do exactly this with my business. myid@business.com - which didn't actually have email service of its own (low volume/no need) nor was the use confidential. So just sent it on to a personal gmail account.

I could have moved it to hotmail or yahoo or whatever and kept the "public" face of it - the same. Had I ever felt the need due to bad behaviour of one or another provider.

And had multiple id1, id2, id3 and pointed them or groups of them - to different places. Downside of this is the business use needs to be limited and avoid any data protection concerns about the web platforms scraping it all. For my use this did not matter.

There are some slight subtleties on how emails look. With routing and what people see on the headers.

But basically this has always been a legacy feature of the 1980s/90s internet. And is supported technically in evolved form to this day.

If you have your own domain registered. Trivial to keep myid@mydomain the same. And move it around. But need to pay for a domain for your family, business or club.

fwor

In the mid 80's a new standard was developed that would have separated email addresses from their current link to domain names, creating a new and more flexible name system. It was a small part of the development of the then-new X.400 messaging standards.

Forty years on and we still have the same old system. The then-new standard failed to catch on for a number of reasons - primarily these were that nobody wanted to pay for it, and it wasn't developed in the US so the Americans didn't want it to succeed (but in fairness it was more complex than the ancient user@domain.com type addresses that we still have now).

I just do what gm0 suggests above - register my own domain and pay a service provider a small amount per month to run a mail server for me.

MattMattMattUK

They can be, get your own domain. If you mean why can you not move Outlook to Gmail then that is because of technological limitations.

marcia_

this is why I changed to yahoo. I previously changed my email every time I changed provider which was a nuisance keeping friends up to date with my contact details.

flaneurs_lobster

Depends what you mean by portability. I've had my original Hotmail address for (just about) 30 years and my first Gmail for 25. Not really portable since either company could announce that they are canning the domains and they could disappear forever, but not likely for the foreseeable.

My personal domain followed 10 years later.

You don't "own" your mobile or landline number, you are given the exclusive use of the number for as long as you pay a provider. The providers are given the right to issue a range of numbers by the national regulator.

A personal email is similar, see the technical reasons in the informed posts above. Look at getting your own personal domain set up, it's an interesting learning curve into a bit of the internet that's pretty fundamental but not seen by most users.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6655119/why-can-039-t-email-addresses-be-portable

Echo everyone else's question of what do you mean?

Email addresses are portable, subject to settings made by those that own servers. So I can access any of my email address from any device in the world. I regularly transfer them from one device to another when upgrading laptop or mobile.

I suspect you mean you setup an email address with ISP1 using their domain and then stop using them as your ISP and so lose that email address? Thats nothing to do with portability but to do with you not paying them for a service anymore. The could choose to offer it as a service for a separate fee but most just dont think its worth while doing so.

Ultimately the owner of the domain controls who it allows to have a mail box under their domain. For obvious reasons an employer wouldnt want an employee they've fired to continue to be able to use their former work email address etc. ISPs can be no different.

Easiest solution is to get your email address independent from your ISP be that Gmail, Outlook or any of the host of other providers therefore you can switch ISP and or email provider without having to switch the other.

onomatopoeia99

As others have said it depends on what you mean by portability.

Do you mean being able to access franklett186@example.com forever, from anywhere?

Do you mean that if your existing address is one provided by an ISP, being able to make a different ISP accept email sent to that address?

Something else?

Email is routed by domain, so all email destined for example.com goes to a mailserver designated by the owner of the example.com domain. From there it goes into individual mailboxes, fred@example.com, frank@example.com etc. The operator of example.com could set the franklett186@example.com address to be forwarded on to franklett186@gmail.com, but without sender rewriting (which is a nuisance) gmail is likely to reject it due to an SPF fail.

So in your portable email address scenario, who do you imagine hosts the mailbox where your mail ends up, who do you imagine operates the server that accepts your email and who do you imagine pays?

Neil_Jones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6655119/why-can-039-t-email-addresses-be-portable

Do you mean "portable" as in you can move your email address to somebody else much like you can move your broadband between providers?

If so, that can be done (as alluded to above) with a bit of jumping through hoops and a domain/email of your own. Own as in "its yours to use providing you keep paying for it".

You've never been able to move (for example) Yahoo to Outlook for example, they are on two entirely different platforms. You can set up to "pull in" from one and the other though, so you can see your Yahoo mail on Gmail or whatever which is about as close as it gets.