Over the past couple of days, our technical support team has been contacted with this question. An ACE Fiber subscriber, who had kept his Comcast.net email address after switching to ACE Fiber, has lost access to his email account using email applications, such as Outlook and Apple Mail.
We have learned that Comcast has temporarily (and perhaps permanently) blocked a range of IP addresses owned by ACE Fiber, preventing our customers from accessing their Comcast.net email addresses through ACE Fiber. Our network engineering team has made several efforts to establish communications with Comcast concerning removing the blacklisted addresses, but Comcast has been unwilling to discuss the matter with us.
While the situation is out of our control, we will attempt to help our customers troubleshoot this issue by providing recommendations that will help mitigate problems like this in the future:
- First, ACE Fiber recommends switching to an “ISP-agnostic” email address which is not tied to a particular Internet Service Provider (“ISP”). Some free options include:
- Gmail – https://www.gmail.com
- Yahoo Mail – https://www.yahoo.com
- Proton Mail – https://proton.me/mail
- If you have a business and have a website domain, consider getting an email address through your domain host (GoDaddy, Google, etc.). This will also avoid the problem of having an email address tied to a particular ISP.
- A temporary workaround is to visit https://www.xfinity.com/ using a web browser and login to Comcast’s web-based email. This should not be blocked and allow you to access your email.
- First, ACE Fiber recommends switching to an “ISP-agnostic” email address which is not tied to a particular Internet Service Provider (“ISP”). Some free options include:
A Comcast.net email address is, in fact, owned and operated by Comcast. According to Comcast’s website…..
- Comcast.net email services can be terminated at any time by Comcast, according to their Terms of Services (TOS) located here: https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/subscriberagreement
Comcast’s TOS reads as follows concerning email accounts:
How we may terminate or suspend Services
Subject to applicable law, we reserve the right to immediately terminate or suspend the Services without notice for any reason or no reason. We also reserve the right to remove from the Services any information stored or transmitted by or to any users (e.g., email or voicemail). We may take these actions if we reasonably determine that your use of the Services: (a) violates this Agreement, any applicable policies, or any laws, rules, or regulations; (b) interferes with our ability to provide the Services to you or to others; or (c) interferes with or endangers the health or safety of our personnel or third parties, including if you threaten, harass, or use vulgar or inappropriate language toward our personnel. We have discretion in deciding whether and why to terminate or suspend Services. If we continue providing Services, this does not mean we have reviewed or approved any use of the Services, or any information transmitted through the Services.
- Comcast reserves the right to delete your email address and emails if the TOS agreement terminates, which could be when you terminate Comcast internet services. Section 22 of Comcast’s TOS reads as follows:
RETENTION OF RIGHTS
We may decide not to enforce our rights or exercise a remedy under this Agreement in a specific instance. This will not be a waiver of our rights or remedies. Nothing contained in this Agreement limits our rights and remedies available at law or in equity. If this Agreement terminates, we (and the Released Entities) reserve the right to delete all of your data, files, electronic messages, voicemails, user account names, email addresses, IP addresses, websites, or other information that are stored and/or used with the Services. If you cancel Voice without porting your service or telephone number to another service provider, you will forfeit the telephone number. We and the Released Entities will not be liable for the loss of any data, information, or phone numbers.
We regret that our valued customers are experiencing these problems being caused by Comcast’s actions in blocking ACE Fiber’s IP addresses. Again, ACE Fiber recommends the above options to move toward an ISP-agnostic email address, which should resolve the issue going forward.
