I have been dealing with technology for at least fifty years, so I am never surprised by outages, glitches, bugs, and other routine events. So when my onecitizenspeaking email stopped working, there was little cause for panic.

• I checked my connection.
• I checked my email vendor for outages.
• I logged on to the vendor's web client and found no issues.
• I checked for operating system updates.
• I checked for email client updates.
• I reviewed my email client settings, including log-on credentials.
• I rebooted my computer.
• I enabled advanced logging and sent a series of test messages.

Aha!

Congrats! Your email has been successfully updated to Microsoft 365. Check out your new dashboard!

Get Advanced Email Security for $4.99 per user/month and keep your emails safe from viruses and phishing.

My email vendor switched their account settings to those used by Microsoft 365, which is now their email provider of choice.

I updated my settings to accommodate the switch to Microsoft, cleared the logs, and re-sent my series of test messages.

All was well – or was it?

In the discovery process, I found that my email was being filtered by an unknown third party, Microsoft, and other than explicitly whitelisting domains or specific email addresses, I had lost control of my incoming and outgoing messaging. Since they are scanning my email, who knows what they are eliminating? Especially when we see big tech censoring and canceling conservative individuals, organizations, and sites.

There was no comfort in learning, "Your email is stored on Microsoft's secure servers, which prevent any damage while your email is at rest. However, when you send and receive messages, they can be exposed to attackers while in transit. That's where the Advanced Email Security add-on comes in. It keeps your emails safe from ever being seen or tampered with and helps prevent some of the common mistakes that can lead to compromises."

I confirmed that there was no way to really turn off this third-party spam filtering, only adjusting parameters; and that after fifteen days, any mail in the spam folder would be automatically deleted.

And, I am not the only one in the community with a problem with this policy.

When I have called GoDaddy about this (several times), they have not offered any solutions except to try to create Rules to take all incoming emails and send them to the Inbox. I am experimenting with this now to see if it will completely bypass the junk email filter. Ridiculous that turning off the junk email filter is not a selectable option, but it is a workaround that we will see if it hopefully works. -- Scott

Rules will not work - mail is filtered before the rules run. --Diane

I discussed this several times directly with Microsoft tech support and also discussed with an independent Outlook consultant. They said that the ability to turn off the junk email filter previously existed though it was removed from user control at some point. --Scott

Bottom line…

It is time to separate my email from my domain provider to another more secure vendor who is not likely to censor or cancel the account.

It is time for legislation to return ownership and control over users' information to the user, and restrict those onerous third-party unilateral terms of services that rape users.

I pay for my email service and expect it to be free from vendor manipulation.

We are so screwed.

-- steve