Today I tried to solve a problem that really isn’t mine, by getting a new email address. The problem is that a close friend can no longer receive emails from me. He can send them to me, and get them from everyone else, but not from me. I can send and receive to anyone I want, including him, he just never receives my messages and this has gone on for over a month now.
I have 5 email addresses linked to 5 domains all hosted on one domain host, and not one is able to get a message to him. All are able to receive from him.
ANYWAY….. I tried to get a new email address served by a different host than mine, just to see if that would work, and it did. I set up a new email account on proton.me as a trial, and sent him a couple messages that he was able to answer back to. But there’s a problem. I can only do this from the proton.me website. I can’t enable the new address in my computer email program because proton.me wants me to enter a code it sends to my cell phone, only my cell phone never gets the code, so proton.me will not validate the new email address. It will only function on their website and I’m not going to hang out on it all day every day waiting for an email.
Other email programs have similar problems but the one that really gets me right between the ribs is when they require that I give them my email address and my smartphone number.
What if I don’t own a smartphone? Fact is, I DON’T. I just have a flip phone, don’t want a goddam smartphone and never did. That’s one. The other is, what the hell do they think I’m trying to get? What if I don’t have an email address, that’s why I’m on their website, to GET an email address.
Then there’s the security tests that don’t work and all the really intrusive personal questions being asked that I won’t answer so they can target me with ads. I’m trying to sign up for PAID email, I’ll pay them, not asking for free, but it’s still a humongously massive asspain.
I finally gave up, called my friend and told him he’s just going to have to find a fix for this on his own. And you know, it all just made me think back, to not very long ago, when there were no cell phones and no satellite dishes and no Internet. Life was just so much better then, everything was so much simpler.
We have sacrificed simplicity for convenience and we got a raw deal.