Century Link

Last fall Century Link changed their e-mail service to require all outgoing e-mail to be routes through their servers. You could use another outgoing e-mail server as your host but it couldn’t send mail through that SMTP server, only Century Link’s SMTP servers. 

They wanted to control all outgoing e-mail to eliminate spammers and bulk mailers, but instead of focusing on just the few high volume e-mail senders which they can determine, they forced the change on all their customers. Big Brother couldn’t be more proud to monitor and control people than that.

And today, their e-mail servers went down big time. No one can send e-mail, period. All mail from their accounts are bounced and all mail via other hosts through their servers doesn’t get sent. Nothing. Absolutely nothing gets out.

Nice going Century Link. And if you use Century Link telephone and DSL lines or use them as your ISP, you’re screwed because you’re not getting service and you’re paying for it too. I'm not a fan of Century Link anymore, although their technicians have provided great service, but the alternative is Xfinity, aka Comcast, whom I hate more than Century Link.

The lesson is to keep a separate, not a Century Link, e-mail account on your cellphone or tablet and use wifi or cellphone provider to send e-mail through your e-mail providers SMTP servers. Something I learned with this outage.