Depending on the cost, I would have as well to keep that email address.

Edit to say, interesting proton mail's website is blocked on my Navy computers.... but gmail isn't.

eric76 said:

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In my case, I have my primary backup storage at the office and store copies of the backups on the cloud.

On my workstation, my home user data is stored on another drive and I make a backup of that user data to a third drive and to a USB drive. That is done twice a day -- at 8 am and 8 pm. Also, as part of that backup, the configuration files and other primary data from all my servers are copied to the user data drive using rsync.

Then I periodically copy the third drive backup to storage on my ProtonMail account where I have approximately 6.5 terabytes available. I have a Visionary account which they no longer offer. They do offer a Family Account that is kind of the same thing but with somewhat less storage.

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I've been using both Dropbox and Google Drive for years (Google backs up Dropbox). I used to have a hard drive backup as well but got away from it. I'm thinking about going back to it as a 3rd option though and would love to use something automatic. Will definitely look into rsync.

As far as the original problem of this thread, I migrated my Google Drive storage over to a personal G account when they announced that change a few years ago. I thankfully didn't have any issues with that process. Never used the email much which I am thankful for now.

Finally received an email saying my @aggienetwork address will be sunset at the end of March

Boo. I didn't use it as my primary but it was handy for signing up for free trials and such.

I can't say this is really world-ending for me, since it was a "backup" account. I'm more in love with the novelty of having "myfirstname"@AggieNetwork.com that I can give out in select circumstances.

It's absurd that The Association can't find the funds from their vast resources to fund this moving forward. Absolutely absurd.

The official email...

Howdy,



Over the past few years, Google has continued to make changes to its
Workspace for Education program, under which @AggieNetwork.com accounts
exist. Previously, these changes necessitated removing Google Drive and
other features from @AggieNetwork.com accounts.

Given these ongoing changes and after an extensive evaluation of the
long-term viability of the @AggieNetwork.com email program, which included
evaluating potential replacements and consulting with security
professionals, we have made the difficult decision to sunset this program.

****************************************************************************
******************************

The @AggieNetwork.com email service will be permanently disabled on March
31, 2024.
****************************************************************************
******************************

Anyone with a personal @AggieNetwork.com email account will need to save any
emails and files they wish to keep, and update various accounts on which the
personal @AggieNetwork.com email account is registered with a new email
address to prevent any gaps in service, by March 31, 2024, when
@AggieNetwork.com accounts will be deleted.

This does not impact official @AggieNetwork.com accounts for A&M Clubs,
Classes, or Constituent Networks at this time.

Over the next three and a half months, we will continue to communicate the
urgency of saving/transferring emails and content through communications
like this one, on AggieNetwork.com, our social channels, and other relevant
places.

We understand the inconvenience this presents to so many of our users. As we
all transition through this process, we thank you for your patience and
understanding and appreciate your help in spreading the word to others who
may be affected. In the meantime, we will strive to make this process as
seamless as possible for our users.

To manage your @AggieNetwork.com email account, including changing your
password, please visit https://tx.ag/MyEmail.

To follow all updates regarding the sunsetting of this program, please visit
https://tx.ag/EmailSunset.

Learn about Google's recommended procedures for removing content from your
account at https://takeout.google.com/ and
https://takeout.google.com/transfer.

Reach out to <mailto:Email@AggieNetwork.com> Email@AggieNetwork.com with
any additional questions or concerns.



In the Aggie Spirit,

The Association of Former Students

Red Pear Jack said:

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This is just a cost cutting measure, plain and simple.

Don't disguise it with a security issue. You're using Google not some Eastern European email host.

Every other university in the country has figured out how to give alumni access to an email account, or at the very least a forwarding address.

Surprising that the association just gave up. Pretty disappointing.

---

I think it is just not wanting to deal with the headache. I know at my place of work some of the recent google changes have caused some pains. I am surprised that the Association would willing give up so much contact information for former students.

I was corrected earlier that you don't need to pay for it but having relied on my aggienetwork email for job related stuff for so long I would happily pay keep it.

TAMU has their own IT department, but can't set up an email server for Former Students?

I'd be willing to come home if it pays enough.

TexasRebel said:

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TAMU has their own IT department, but can't set up an email server for Former Students?

I'd be willing to come home if it pays enough.

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It doesn't....

Dawnguard said:

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An event like this is one of the fears I had about gmail when I posted a topic asking about leaving gmail a few weeks ago (https://texags.com/forums/30/topics/3421817/). Google (and most of the tech companies) seem to be heavily cutting back on the free stuff. Last I saw, gmail had over 1.8 BILLION email accounts, so they have a lot of incentive to pull back their free offerings.

I ended up paying for a year of Proton and have been very pleased with the service. The big downside to proton is that the free tier mail only comes with 500megs of storage (that can be boosted to 1gig after you onboard with a few tasks.)

That being said, Skiff would be where I would point someone looking to escape for free right now. Free tier includes 10gigs AND a unlimited custom domain addresses. (The advantage to this is when you own the domain, you can move it to any mail service and not have to actually change your email address - you'd just have to set that inbox up again), and their UI is very slick.

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I'm planning to set up email routing with cloudflare. I have a custom domain purchased so I'll just use that. It will forward emails to an inbox of choice. If I run out of space on an inbox or want to switch providers I can update the destination email from cloudflare without updating all of my accounts.

100% correct. The "for life" opens them up to a lot of criticism and potential liability for not living up to that promise.

At a minimum, they need to be providing a forwarding service for a sufficient period of time (1 year??) in order to really catch all the accounts/people we miss when trying to transition to another email address over these next few months.

The amount of time and effort that this is going to cost me is not negligible, and even with that I am going to miss so many accounts and lose so many contacts.

I get where you guys are coming from with the hassles and the promises. But at the same time this was a free service.

Why not make it part of the century club package then?

Does any know if setting up a custom email account, such as with gmail or icloud, using an alias address - name@aggienetwork.com - is possible?

GAP76 said:

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Does any know if setting up a custom email account, such as with gmail or icloud, using an alias address - name@aggienetwork.com - is possible?

---

There are a couple ways. One, purchase a domain, and purchase Google Workspace (what Aggienetwork isn't supporting anymore)

Two. Cloudflare email routing.

https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/email-routing/

You have to own whatever domain you choose. You can conveniently purchase one from cloudflare. This allows you to create an email alias such as name@yourdomain.com, that points to an inbox of your choice, like a free gmail account. Then when that one fills up eventually, you switch to a new one without having to switch all of your logins.

Thanks for the quick response. I will look into that. Quick question, will one of those 2 options allow us to continue using the name@aggienetwork.com address without having to notify and change email addresses to everyone and every account this address is tied to?

Understand now. Thanks!

Your best hope to keep @aggienetwork.com is to become a student organization.

GAP76 said:

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Like everyone has already said, this will be a major pain trying to make all the changes and notifications. But trying to find an upside, for me, it is past time to move to a more secure platform with aliasing options too.

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Yep. If the online storage hadn't been rescinded a while back I would have never learned about self-hosting. Been a fun journey and I've learned a TON.

If your ISP doesn't block all the necessary ports. Then it's a game of port forwarding.

TexasRebel said:

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If your ISP doesn't block all the necessary ports. Then it's a game of port forwarding.

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Sadly, my ISP router doesn't support NAT loopback, so I was never able to get port forwarding to work properly. Tailscale has been the perfect solution for that. No port forwarding whatsoever.

My next project is setting up local DNS for my services, so my family doesn't have to memorize IP addresses.