‘Lifelong’ email addresses last under three years

But that's a lifetime in e-biz world

By Lucy Sherriff • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 21st June 2000 11:24 GMT

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How long is a lifetime on the Net? Shorter than you w'd think.

Bigfoot, an email forwarding service that offers "email addresses for life", has had to tell its rock.com customers that their accounts will cease to function today.

Nearly three years ago Bigfoot and its partner company, Thinking Pictures, made addresses available at the rock.com domain. Now, however, the domain name has been sold on to a third party, Soundstone - and since Soundstone does not want to run the email forwarding, the accounts will cease to exist.

Bigfoot offers email forwarding from its own domain too, and has said that all its rock.com users can register at Bigfoot.com instead. Small consolation, since these accounts are available for free to anyone who wants them anyway.

Bigfoot also promotes these addresses being lifelong. "No need to have an identity crisis - just get a bigfoot.com address! It's yours for life - give it out once to your 'inner circle' and then whenever you get a new email address you notify only Bigfoot, leaving your friends at peace and your mind at ease," the site enthuses.

Perhaps it should be amended to include: "We reserve the right to sell the domain at any time, thus rendering any email addresses, and our lifetime guarantees, utterly useless."

In an email to members, Bigfoot said that the sale was beyond its control, and that it was Thinking Pictures that sold the domain on. ®

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