Boffin botheration as IET lifts axe on 20-year-old email alias service

Join IEEE?

Those if us with the extra E still have email forwarding. I'm not sure what spam filtering they apply to the address, but the spam has been minimal over the 20 years or so I've had the account. Of course, that might also have something to do with the fact that I haven't ever really used the alias (searching through my history, the only activity is a test email about once every three years to check where I'm forwarding the emails).

They throw in Google apps now as well (your call as to if that's a plus or a minus).

Another "use someone else's server" service bites the dust

Yep, the gentlemen's agreement of "we give you a prestigious email address for nothing and forward anything that comes in to whatever you want" is now coming to an end.

Just like the good old days of nobles riding into the Church on their horses is long gone.

Sorry guys, you had it good for a such a long time that you thought the rules were set in stone, but the truth is you used someone else's service, based your life around it and now that service is being yanked.

Great idea too, creating your website logins on a forwarded email. Like the website cared what your email was in the first place.

Despite all the IoT bullshit about managing your house from your phone (using someone else's server), the future looks squarely set to "you manage your own shit and if not, you takes your chances".

In this case, the chips are now down and the house is closing shop. I think the global message is clear : don't trust someone else's server.

Cachet

You're not wrong. I met someone with such an address in person recently and complimented them on it!

and the rules say?

" ... and the group points out that to maintain email servers for the personal use of its members was outside of its charitable remit."

It's not a charity, it's a chartered institution and its members pay about £200 a year in membership fees. Anyway, email and servers etc did not exist when its charter was drawn up so what was the justification for setting up the forwarding service in the first place?

Losing email is nothing . . .

. . . compared to the mess caused when they closed the technical discussion forums (without notice) and re-branded them "communities" a few years ago. Not recovered yet. (Yes I am a member).

iee-member.org iee-fellow.org etc.

IEE should register domains such as this, then phase one would be to forward all non-core (i.e., member emails as opposed to official IEE business) to an equivalent mailbox on the new domain. The main problem really is who will maintain this "alumni" service.

Urgh. It is annoying, I do use this, and have done for the past decade. I'm also aware it isn't 100% reliable, but would prefer it's continued unreliable use rather than being cut off because of it. My hotmail account does carry a lot of my email, and the actual address (something like princess.von.chicken.pants44@hmail.com) is not something I'd choose nowadays. Indeed I set it up when I was 12, can you tell?

Alias is much better, as I can make it firstname.lastname@theiet.org and actually put that on things like a CV.

Trying to work out which organisations I gave it out to over the past decade is just an exercise in futility - I've given it to plenty of recruiters and do occasionally get decent headhunting offers through them, virtually always from companies and organisations where I've never seen their domain before, so it's not like I can actually inform people it's changed, because I don't actually know the majority of people who have the address to be able to contact them.

As for it being a free service, my chartered membership fees are in excess of 240 quid a year - so I don't think some semblance of a paid service is unreasonable. Still, at least we get a fair amount of notice to deal with it.

Maybe it is time to get around to setting up my own email server on an RPi...

A joke of an institution. I'm outta here.

It's become a joke. What's the IET for, in the 21st century, other than winning awards for the design of its high-gloss monthly magazine which seems to be an expensive imitation of T3 most of the time these days. I'm not sure whether that's a huge improvement on a few years ago when IEE News frequently seemed to look like it'd been written by National Instrument's PR people.

Yes some of the individual members at the sharp end of the IEE and BCS still do good work inside and outside their employers, but many of them don't, and some of them at senior e.g. FIET level are downright disreputable with no visible means of the IET addressing those people's relevant issues (competence, honesty, bullying, etc), which reflects rather unsatisfactorily on the IET as a professional organisation.

I'd been hoping that the increasing number (and cost) of systems failures in the UK which have had significant publicity might lead the IET (and specifically the former-IEE and former-BCS pieces) to revalue its engineering roots. No such luck so far.

There's clearly been something bubbling under in recent years in some parts of the membership outside HQ, judging by the occasional content-free mentions of Special General Meetings and such.

Michael Faraday would be spinning in his grave.

Depends on your point of view....

It's a charity and I consider my £160 a year to be a donation to the charity.

If I receive any 'member benefits' as a result then that's great but honestly I'm more than happy for them to use my subs to promote engineering to youngsters and the general public.

I don't use or need to use their alias service. Apart from making it look as if you work for the IET I don't see any benefit.