E-mail Fiasco Erases Online Life

Without my e-mail address, I'm homeless on the Internet. I have lots of time and money invested in my e-mail identity, and yet it's gone with a single computer glitch.

In this century , the Internet is both a personal and business necessity. And the basis, the underlying assumption, of all things Internet, is your e-mail address. WIthout it, you are homeless in cyberspace.

The reason I've discovered this is that last week, Comcast took mine away.

In one swell foop, my e-mail login disappeared, and turned up under someone else's account in Wisconsin. And, according to Comcast's records, it has belonged to that person in Wisconsin for the past three years. AND, furthermore, it has never belonged to me at all. And, in fact, my true login has been spelled differently than the one I've been using for the past two years, where I have received over 5,000 e-mails, and upon which I've based all my business correspondence for the past seven months.

My business cards, brochure and website all boast the e-mail of that person in Wisconsin. Every marketing message I've ever sent contains that e-mail address. Every e-zine, newsletter, user group and information website I've signed up for uses that login as my username. My Paypal and online bank accounts are all connected to that address.

Going back to every business and personal contact I've made on the Internet to change my info would be impossible. And any friend or customer who has tried to contact me in the past week has had their e-mails blocked or sent to Wisconsin. Meanwhile, I'm sure that a certain Comcast customer in Wisconsin has been getting some pretty confusing messages.

So, what does engineering have to do with Comcast, the Internet, and my current lack of e-mail identity?

One of the four (and counting) sterling customer service reps I've had the pleasure of speaking with, actually said something that made sense: "Sometimes we just don't know why computers do these things..."

At least she was honest.