Ask HN: What does it take to change your email address? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does it take to change your email address?

9 pointsmassung7 comments

I was looking at the recent Purelymail post, and (over the past several years) every once in a while I've seriously considered getting off gmail for pretty much anything else (usually looking at Fastmail). But the barriers for doing so feels incredibly high.

In 1password I think I have something like 200 sites I'm registered with, of which I'm sure 199 all use email as the username. Is updating services like Netflix, Amazon (including AWS), etc. even possible? without calling someone on the phone and spending 20 hours trying to prove you are who you say you are?

So, for those of you who have decided to buckle down and go through the pain of accomplishing this task, how did you end up doing it? Were there any in-hindsight experiences you'd pass along to others? Is there some way of "slowly migrating" that's possible and I'm just unaware of?

Thanks!

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Changing emails is potentially dangerous, but I have started doing it anyway. I have taken the “slow migration” track. Every time I log in to a site that uses my old email, I update it to the new one (it is too time consuming/tedious to update every login in one go). I also automatically forward my old email address to the new one so I don't miss anything. I respond with the new one in hopes that others will start using it in the future.

If changing emails is a pressing matter, you could set up a vacation response in your old email and tell people where they should reach you in the future. Then, you need to change all login information for everything. It's a good idea to retain access to your old email for as long as possible in case you forget to change a login, need to reset a password, recover an old account, etc. It is also nice to make sure people who don't have your new email can still reach you.

Because switching emails was not urgent for me, I've chosen to slowly migrate. This process would be a lot harder if I had not been using a password manager.

The only generalized tip I can offer is to check if each service allows adding a second email address vs. changing the only associated email address. Check to see if there is a "verify email" link and verify your secondary email address. Then set is as primary if they offer that option. This gives you a potential fall-back if something goes wrong. Not every service has this option/method and this won't help with every service.

My own preference and learning experience: I have started migrating off anything that does not have a brick-and-mortal presence where I can. It isn't easy and not every service has this option. e.g. Amazon -> Walmart. There are a myriad of pros and cons to this, but I personally accept the cons. Obviously this won't help with AWS. Where that logic breaks down, I migrate to services where I can easily reach a real person that does not read off a script and is permitted to decide how to assist me.

Amazon is working on a physical presence. There is that awful Whole Foods store in Union Square where you have to go through a cattle chute to check out.

WalMart looks more "digitally transformed" to me with an awesome self-check experience and there are at least three natural food stores in my town that beat the pants off "Whole Paycheck" so I'm not concerned.

You just auto-redirect all emails from the old address to the new one. Then, whenever a new email comes from some service, you change the connected email in it. After a year all relevant services will be transferred. Non-relevant emails will stay on the old account for quite some time, which is not a big deal.

Missed this when you posted it sorry, hope you're still watching :)

Fastmail allows you to set up a fetch from your gmail very easily (from other services too, but with gmail we've got oauth integration so it's super painless).

And then, as others have suggested - file all the email from that fetch into a separate folder and for everything that comes in, go update there.

I've moved physical house a couple of times in the past few years, and also had my credit card stolen a couple of times. For both things, I now have a giant checklist in Dropbox Paper (choose your own checklist tech), and I copy it and clear everything and then work through it. Helps heaps. I try to remember to add things there when I give them my address and expect they'll need it long-term.

One thing that stops me from fully migrating is the inability to transfer app purchases from the Play Store and the App Store from one account to another.

I have hundreds of dollars in app that I don't want to repurchase just because I'm changing my virtual mailbox.

Some services matter and other ones don't.

Most of them (e.g. Amazon) have an automated process to change your email address, all you have to do is click on the link of a verification email.

Probably 180 out of your 200 services aren't really worth the trouble, or you can create a new account, or still keep the gmail account around so you can do the occasional password reset.

Many people think that the spam you get from signing up to web sites is a reason to have a personal email address and one that they use just to sign up to web sites.

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