email

The email problems that some Comcast customers experienced this past weekend were apparently caused by power problems in its data center, a giant warehouse of servers. Apparently they also had to restore several email databases, which is why the outage lasted so long. The Comcast blog post is here.

Comcast email servers experienced some technical problems this weekend, resulting in its email service being down for better part of Saturday, or the entire weekend, depending on what part of the Northeast you are in. It appears to be working again now, but if you were without email for the weekend, you can sound off on Comcast’s Twitter page at comcastcares.

This is the subject line of an email I received this morning purporting to come from “NetworkSolutions Support Team”. First of all, I don’t have any domain names registered with Network Solutions (notice that there is supposed to be a space between Network and Solutions); second, bad grammar (your domain ARE expired) is a tip-off to a phishing scam. I checked the Network Solutions support website, and sure enough, there’s a phishing scam going around targeting their customers. You can see what they have to say here. This just serves as a reminder that you should always be wary of unsolicited email, even if it looks like it comes from a legitmate company.

Once again, Comcast is having issues with their email service. They are in the middle of transitioning their existing email system to a new system called SmartZone. In the course of this transition, they have had several email outages and service disruptions. I personally have fielded several support calls from customers whose email suddenly stopped working; upon calling Comcast, I was informed that their email server address had changed… of course there was no notice whatsoever from Comcast. It seems that this time, however, they have really made a mess of things. As of last night, a community forum discussion on Comcast’s website had approximately 419 responses regarding email and webmail being completely down yesterday. Another site that I follow had about 46 responses to a story yesterday about the Comcast email problem. So if you are experiencing problems accessing your Comcast email at all this week, you are not alone. Unfortunately it seems that there is not much anyone can do except wait for Comcast to “fix” the issue. Verizon’s FIOS is looking very tempting at this point…

It seems that the spam never ends these days. In a previous post, I wrote about a new wave that looked like it came from CNN, Microsoft, and later, MSNBC. That seems to have slowed down as everyone caught on that it was a hoax, but the general sea of spam has kept up at a steady pace. I just wanted to remind everyone about the basics of good email safety: never open a message from someone you don’t know; never click on a link in an email (if you have to go to the link, such as a bank, open your browser and type in the address); don’t send your personal information via email; no reputable company will EVER ask you for either your personal information or your account information via email, so don’t send it. Read the rest of this entry »