
Tumblr – Heads-up for AT&T customers - dhotson
https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115007729788-Heads-up-for-AT-T-customers
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adambatkin
Is this designed to be a test of (lack of) net neutrality or something?

Verizon now owns Tumblr. AT&T e-mail addresses will suddenly be blacklisted
from logging in to Tumblr.

Maybe I am reading too much in to this?

 _Edit_ According to TechCrunch ([https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/take-the-
oath/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/take-the-oath/)) it's all cool.
Except that the explanation still makes no sense. It sounds like what they are
saying is that (for example) an att.net e-mail address won't be a Yahoo
account anymore, which I assume means that Yahoo won't be hosting their e-mail
or something like that. But why wouldn't those addresses become the "username"
on Yahoo logins, in the same way that any e-mail address can sign up as a
Google account, even though the e-mail itself is hosted elsewhere (i.e. my
"username" for Google could be a non-Google-hosted e-mail address, but my
e-mail itself has nothing to do with Google - i.e. it's not a GMail account).

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ben1040
This isn't a net neutrality thing, it's the breaking of a relationship that
AT&T and Yahoo has had for 15 years. AT&T email addresses were once Yahoo
accounts. Now they're not.

SBC, prior to acquiring BellSouth and AT&T, originally contracted with Yahoo
to run email/web portal service for their customers.

The SBC/ATT email addresses were essentially premium Yahoo accounts but with
SBC's domain, and had access to all of Yahoo's products. At least at one
point, SBC/ATT customers got free Flickr Pro as part of this.

AT&T evidently has left email the same (for now) but they've set up their own
web portal. People have been informed that the former Yahoo-enabled accounts
will no longer be usable for Yahoo properties.

[https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31478297-Legacy-swbell-
use...](https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31478297-Legacy-swbell-user-and-AT-
T-June-28-changes)

edit, after your edit: since it seems like Yahoo is still handling the email
side (for the time being) I imagine their system just treats these email
addresses as neutered Yahoo accounts, so they'd be unusable on Yahoo-owned
services that expect a Yahoo account.

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plorg
Up until last year I was still on AT&T and using a dumbphone. The phone I had
came with software to sync contacts with "the cloud". It was much easier to
edit the list online (or even just as a CSV file) than on the phone itself. I
never figured out how to access this list using the normal AT&T online portal,
but I did find it through the Yahoo portal, if mostly by accident.

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some1else
It would be interesting to know how many users are impacted. AT&T stats imply
some astronomic numbers:
[https://www.att.com/Common/about_us/pdf/att_btn.pdf](https://www.att.com/Common/about_us/pdf/att_btn.pdf)

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mintplant
Does anyone know if this will affect email access to the listed domains? My
parents use an @bellsouth.net address as their primary email.

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qmarchi
So long as they use the AT&T portal, they should be unaffected by the changes.

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dzonga
Is that legal ?

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pmiller2
Why wouldn't it be?

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rapidstuff
Verizon flexing it's muscles?

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65827
What the fuck happened to the internet?

~~~
Coffeecuptbh
*the American Internet

