Hi,
I know this will be long, but please take a few minutes to read it. I think it is really important.
If like myself you have been a long-time user of TPG (or any of its related companies such as iiNet), chances are that you may have an Email only account with them.
In my scenario this was force upon me due to the changing policies of TPG over the years, whereby they would not allow you to move and keep the same account name. The only alternative was to accept a new account name and create an Email alias of your old account name under your new account. This was a decent alternative and it meant you could keep your original Email address.
Back in older times, this became slightly messy when almost everything was tied to a phone number.
The only way to have an active service was to provide the new phone number at the time you were arranging the move. If you couldn’t, and you wanted/needed to keep the Email address, the only alternative was to change your then current account into an Email only account. From memory, this cost about $30 a year, which was worth it, so you just did it. My personal situation where this occurred was during an interstate move, where it was going to take a week to sort out the new phone number, even though this was being done through a tpg adsl+phone bundle, where previous and new services were going to be identical.
Once the new account was setup, the Email only account with an Alias worked well.
You’ve already paid for it, and it was working, so you left it alone and continued to use it.
You may have thought about attempting to move the alias Email onto your current account, although you just knew something would go pear-shaped and you ran a very real and high risk of loosing your “golden” Email address forever, so you left it.
Unbeknown to myself and I’m sure most other people, TPG stopped allowing new Email account creation on 6-June-2023. It seems this also included new TPG customers who were not provisioned with Email as part of their service. I am pretty sure this date was quite a bit prior to any notifications to their existing customer base. It seems that around the same time creation or changes to Email Aliasing was also enacted. In short, this has been in the pipe for quite a while before it became known and it seems that the notifications are being sent out staggered depending upon the service you have with them. They also removed their own staffs access to tools to help people move or change things associated with many Email related things before sending any information to their customers.
In brief, I have been a TPG customer for over 15 years.
I have always had an internet with home phone and two mobile phones with TPG.
Since first joining TPG, I have always used the same Email address for any and all Emails.
Over the years, you loose track of how many services you have tied to that Email address.
You also don’t always realise how invasive and important that Email address is, because it just sort of happens over a long period.
In my scenario, this now covers this such as, Banking, Health/Medical, Superannuation, Legal, Product Registration for things like warranty, Password recovery, subscription services, and a myriad of other things. Almost my entire life.
At first thought people may not realise how important this is.
While I don’t use a lot of these things personally, giving it a bit of though it could include things such as your Apple iTunes account, pay TV service, Streaming TV service such as Netflix or whatever, Anti-Virus subscription, VPN service, friends you only catch up with via Email once or twice a year, the list goes on.
So, while TPG are starting with killing off Email only accounts and providing a “free” migration to another provider, your first thought may be to just do it.
However, there are a few things to carefully consider before you do this.
To start with, you need to consider the on-going costs.
If you read the information on TPG’s Customer Support Site, that was not included in the Email you got.
https://support.tpg.com.au/tpg-email-messaging-company
You will see that TPG have said they will pay for this service until 15 September 2024, if you agree to the Terms and Conditions of Email Transfer that are on the same page.
Ok, let’s read them before we click on anything else.
Condition 2 is that you need to agree with the terms and conditions of The Messaging Company – more on this later
Condition 4 is that you will be responsible for paying The Messaging Company after 15 September 2024 and that The Messaging Company will contact you with available pricing options at least 60 days prior to commencing charges – more on this later
Condition 6 is the first potential clanger. TPG may withdraw the right to remove this Email Address when or if you cease acquiring services from TPG.
This means that you MUST have a service with TPG that THEY consider to be related. A potential pitfall here is that TPG may once again decide that a new service is not actually related, so if you must always find a way to have a “related” service.
Condition 11 if the real clanger, and where TPG themselves are suggesting that you exercise care and diligence.
This is actually heavily tied to Condition 2, agreeing to the Terms and Conditions of The Messaging Company.
Let’s look at the easy one first, Condition 4 – paying The Messaging Company after 15 September 2024
The Messaging Company does not provide any details whatsoever as to what their current charges are.
It is impossible to find out what they are charging now, so you have absolutely no idea what they may or may not charge in September 2024.
It could be about $30 a year, or it could be $300. They can try to charge whatever they feel like or think they can get away with.
If they decided to make it $300 a year and you are prepared to pay that, you also need to remember this will only live while you have a related TPG service.
Remember Condition 6 … TPG could revoke your right this Email address and you have now paid for a service that The Messaging Company can’t provide <groan>
Now let’s look at the biggest red-flag of them all.
Condition 2, agreeing to The Messaging Company’s terms and conditions, which means agreeing to their privacy notice.
https://themessaging.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/20230721-TMC-Privacy-Notice.pdf
Allow me to preface this by clearly stating that, “I Am Not A Lawyer”
In my opinion, if you read this notice, and digest it, The Messaging Company basically tell you that you will not have any privacy with them.
They telegraph the fact that they will collect as much information about you as they possibly can.
They will grab whatever information as they can about you using any and all means possible – read conditions 2 and 3 carefully.
They are quite happy for you to link any third-party Email or File Service accounts to this Email account (such as Gmail, Microsoft, Dropbox, anything), because if you do, you are going them permission to read any and all of these Emails or scour the files.
So, even the simple act of linking any password recovery to this, you have just given them permission and they can legally go on their hunting expedition.
Condition 4 is the real killer. They tell you that they will disclose any and all of your personal data to anyone they can sell it to.
Condition 5 is another killer. They tell you that their servers are located in countries other than Australia and that includes the USA, EU, and Singapore.
This means that all of your Emails (yes the body text of your Emails) and Personal data can and probably will be scraped by the NSA in the US, and any of the 14-Eyes countries within the EU and UK and Singapore.
In brief, you have given The Messaging Company permission to not only read any and all Emails you send through their service, but potentially any and all Emails sent through something such as Gmail, snoop on what you watch on TV that night, work out how much you earn, where you spend your money and how, and then sell it to others, while they also allow foreign governments free access to the same information.
Another interesting thing about The Messaging Company is that they don’t have a phone number.
There will never be a human person you can talk to about anything.
We have until September 15, so there is time to find a safe, secure and private Email service and start the painful migration task.
After getting this out, my next task is to find an Email provider that actually has a privacy policy, does not read my Emails and actively harvest information about me to sell to others, while having their servers in a “data safe” country, while being affordable.
.EndOfMessage
