WOW BT to drop domain

[Whois-Search]

BTopenworld denies plans to ditch domain
[PC Pro] 15:53

There's confusion about the future of BT's mass market ISP after internal sources told customers that it has plans to ditch its BTopenworld domain.
Not only would such a move spell upheaval for the tens of thousands of BTopenworld customers who have a BTopenworld email address, it also throws up questions about the very future of BT's ISP business.

The revelations about the future of the BTopenworld domain were contained in a series of emails between a customer and the ISP.

The customer, who has asked not to be named, currently subscribes to BTopenworld's dial-up service but is looking to upgrade to broadband. Part of the reason for subscribing to BTopenworld was that he was told that he could hang on to his @btopenworld.com email address.

Last week, though, he was told that this wasn't the case and that if he subscribed to BTopenworld's ADSL service he would have to change his email address to one ending @btinternet.com.

When he wrote to BTopenworld for clarification he was told that the BTopenworld domain would be discontinued. When he wrote back again just to make sure there had been no mistake he was told that the domain "will be discontinued at some point in time" although no date had been set for its termination.

Other customers would be told nears the time, the BTopenworld employee said.

However, a spokesman for BTopenworld denied that the domain was under threat and was adamant that there were no plans to discontinue the domain.

"If this has caused any confusion then we apologise," he said.

Last week, BT's top brass were unable to say whether BTopenworld would still be around this time next year.

Asked about the future of the ISP, BT's newly-appointed chief broadband officer (CBO), Alison Ritchie, said: "Who knows?"

Tim Richardson



And quess who just put a snapback on it :evil:

 

[dtobias]

This sort of thing is why it's always best to use an email address in a domain you own, rather than relying on your ISP... I can never understand why I keep encountering examples of people who do have their own domain name, but still give out their email address as [email protected] or something... morons!

 

[fizz]

Originally posted by Whois-Search
And quess who just put a snapback on it :evil:

Geez if you scored a name like that you'd have truckloads of interesting e-mail to read each day, LOL

But don't forget SnapNames isn't good at getting the long domain names like that, only the 2-letter variety ;-)

 

[David G]

Originally posted by dtobias This sort of thing is why it's always best to use an email address in a domain you own, and could use [email protected], rather than relying on your ISP... I can never understand why I keep encountering examples of people who do have their own domain name, but still give out their email address as [email protected] or something... morons!

Yes, that's one of my pet peeves to. I am always amazed why so many people use [email protected] or [email protected] when they have an active website of their own they could use for emails. That's one of the internet's great mysteries.

I have seen some fairly good website firms doing that. Occasionally I ask them why and they can't really explain it. Very odd, especially when you consider some people won't do business with a firm using a free public email, which address lacks credibility.

As an example, once I was going to do business with a large real estate firm who had a fine website for several yrs but oddly the sales manager used a Hotmail address instead. When I asked him why he did so he became somewhat annoyed and it ruined our potential relationship and we never did any business over it. You are right Dan when you say 'morons,' or is it simply a matter of not thinking or just not knowing any better.

 

[DNQuest.com]

Personally, I will not do business with anyone who uses free or ISP oriented email address. (Unless they are sending me money or I know they are a small company). It projects a poor (literally) image of the company. I have many websites and I have email setup for each one. It's funny when Outlook retrieves my email, it goes through 15 different account.

 

[GeorgeK]

I use Yahoo email in my WHOIS, partially to reduce spam in my own domain accounts. Also, it's an independent email, should your own servers go down. I use the paid version of Yahoo mail (just upgraded recently).

But, for most business communications, I use my own domains (either Kirikos.com, or LOFFS.com -- the latter bought in particular as it has no commercial value, and would never need to be sold).

 

[Ciqala]

george surely using a yahoo address is asking for trouble.

because don't they have a policy like hotmail where if the account is inactive for 60 days it gets deleted etc. so someone could pick it up and try to use it to steal the domains it points to. also I hear of hotmail accounts being breached all the time which i can only assume translates across to most free email providers to some extent again causing problems.

 

[dtobias]

The issue of what email address to use in your WHOIS records is an interesting question... there's something to be said for using an address in a different domain from your own to make it easier to extricate yourself from a registrar screwup where your own domain stops working and you hence can't even receive confirmation emails when you try to change your info so it works again. On the other hand, using a non-owned domain has the risk of losing access to the address. If you own domains registered with different registrars, it might be a good idea to always use addresses within a domain of yours with a different registrar in your WHOIS records... for instance, if you own foo.com registered with GoDaddy, and foo.info registered with register.com (in this case they are not only different registrars, but different registries, so they are very distinct and unlikely to both be screwed up at the same time) you could use an address in foo.com in the foo.info WHOIS and vice versa.

You might want to use a distinct address from any you use on your websites or as the reply address when you send email, so you can see how much of your spam is coming as a result of your WHOIS records; I use "dns@[domain]" as my WHOIS email.

Depending on your provider, you may be able to get lots of different email addresses to forward into a single mailbox, so you don't have a complex task checking your mail. (However, if some of the addresses are more spam-ridden than others, you might want to separate them for easier filtering.)

And you ought to dump that virus-magnet Outlook (aka Outhouse or LooKOut) and get a decent mail program... I like Pegasus Mail (www.pmail.com) myself.

 

[Ciqala]

something that just struck me is how easy it would be for the person who gets this domain to steal any number of domain names...

LOTS of btinternet/btopenworld users all bought domain names to go with their webspace and almost all i would imagine pointed the whois to their btopenworld address. I have seen a lot of such domains on my whois travels.

lets hope that either someone with some ethics get it. good luck with the snap benno

Ciq

 

[Whois-Search]

Maybe they will just stop using the domain and just keep renewing it

 

[DomainPairs]

I can't believe that BT will drop it. For just over $6 per year they can alias it to whatever they want. For that sort of money it's not worth having to send even one letter of apology.

Re: yahoo etc. email addys.

I have got all yahoo and hotmail addresses on deny receipt. My experience is that they are all either kids, spammers, virus distributors, people cheating on their partners or other non productive users. Just my experience - it's easier to block the lot and cut out a whole load of problems.

AOL are non-standard and deliberately disrupt email distribution to try to discredit other ISPs. I ask any AOL user to provide an alternative email address for use when AOL are going through one of their "marketing" phases.