TL;DR
In case you missed the announcement, Cox will no longer provide e-mail hosting services. They’ve sold off that portion of the business to Yahoo.
For those of you who lived through SBC’s demise, they made a similar deal with Yahoo. I still run across some sbcglobal.net addresses from time to time!
What will happen
You will use Yahoo for all your e-mail, even though you have a Cox address. In the short term, if you’re checking e-mail at Cox, your e-mail is “broken.” Don’t worry though, your e-mail is all transferred to Yahoo, you just need to check it there.
The good
Yahoo is owned by a third party, meaning if you leave Cox, you can keep your Cox e-mail address.
The Yahoo interface is much easier to use than Cox’s webmail in a browser.
Yahoo apps for the phone are regularly maintained.
People can still e-mail you at your Cox address.
No need to set up new e-mails with other apps or providers.
The bad
Yahoo has changed ownership more times than we can count.
It’s currently owned by a venture capital group - specifically “Apollo Management Group”
There’s NO telling what kind of affiliate agreements they have - good luck reading the pages of T&Cs or guaranteeing privacy (not that Cox was better).
In fact, this was the primary reason we switched our e-mail to Proton years ago, despite having a Yahoo address since ‘94!
The fix
The fix is pretty easy for most of you (see below). If you still need a hand, want to pursue a different e-mail strategy, or just need hand cleaning up, I’m here to help! 🙂
Stay tuned for our full May newsletter in a few days.
Fix Your E-mail in 2 Steps
I had several calls over the weekend from clients with broken e-mails. Of course, I'm happy to set up individual appointments to discuss strategy. However, for most of you, the fix is simple.
Step 1
Go here:
Log in with your Cox login information. For example “john.doe@cox.net” and your Cox password.
Accept the Yahoo Terms & Conditions (hold your nose at the same time 😂)
Step 2
There is no step two if you use a web browser to check your e-mail like Chrome, Safari, or Edge. Just update your e-mail bookmarks to: https://mail.yahoo.com/
If you use the “Mail” program on your computer (or something like Outlook or Thunderbird) or if you use an app to check your mail on the phone, you need to update your settings.
It’s not complicated! You are just telling your mail program to look in Yahoo’s servers for your e-mail instead of Cox.
Here’s how you do it:
Setup Phone
Setup PC / Mac
Server Settings (if needed)
Most times, you can login with Yahoo as an option. If you need to enter the server settings, use these:
Cox Article
Here is the full Cox article/instructions if you need them:
https://www.cox.com/residential/support/access-and-log-in-to-yahoo-mail-after-transition.html