@boonstra

I somewhat doubt that Operamail accounts are the lifeline of Fastmail - if they are then the company is in serious trouble!

There's currently some half a dozen of us bemoaning the loss of the Operamail address here on the forum and of that number at least half have decided to move on to pastures new.

If those committed to saving Operamail numbered even in the low few hundreds that might perhaps indicate a glimmer of interest in the future of the address and raise the hope that some form of determined collective action could win the day. But I can't see the critical mass required being reached in a month of Sundays - I hope you prove me wrong.

@sgunhouse

The message I've received from Fastmail is unequivocal, there is no chance whatever that Operamail addresses will be returning to use. The fact that not all Operamail account holders have received an email informing them of the withdrawal of the address is not because Fastmail is testing the water. Instead they are informing account holders in batches so that they don't have to deal with responses all at once.

As with another poster, I suspect there's a political agenda involved here as nothing else would seem to explain the unwillingness of the Chinese company that owns the Opera browser and domain to hand administration of Operamail addresses to another party. The email address itself has long since lost any association with the Opera browser so there's no way that Operamail can be accused of tainting the "brand".

Operamail was a good email address to have while it lasted, but a change is as good as a rest and I've decided to run with it.

@string The procedure for generating "app" specific passwords is not necessarily made as clear as it could be, and on occasions in the past I have known it not to work quite as Fastmail intends.

I get a required app password " by logging into fastmail.com via a webmail browser, then going to Mail / Settings / Account / Password & Security / App Passwords, then take it from there. It's probably a good idea to have a Password Manager handy! At all times! Fastmail does provide an auto-generated password for you to use for the app but of course you will need to remember it...

I admit to being a fan of Office 365, including the 1TB OneDrive cloud storage and the other apps I think it's good value for money. And there's a copy of Access thrown in - OK so it's not the most glamorous database app on the block and there are security issues but it's very handy for personal use.

I totally agree about the thinking outside of the box, and in this case a change is much better than a rest for me at least. I've been forced to revisit all my passwords / usernames etc, and have got rid of a tonne of dead wood.

@string I haven't experienced the incompatibility issue between Fastmail and Outlook. I've added my Fastmail account to Outlook just fine. Once you've accepted Fastmail's requirement that you have a different password for Fastmail in Outlook or for alternative logins on other devices/platforms/ then it all seems to work.

@boonstra

I somewhat doubt that Operamail accounts are the lifeline of Fastmail - if they are then the company is in serious trouble!

There's currently some half a dozen of us bemoaning the loss of the Operamail address here on the forum and of that number at least half have decided to move on to pastures new.

If those committed to saving Operamail numbered even in the low few hundreds that might perhaps indicate a glimmer of interest in the future of the address and raise the hope that some form of determined collective action could win the day. But I can't see the critical mass required being reached in a month of Sundays - I hope you prove me wrong.

@wayner46

I haven't made my mind up on a choice of browser to replace Opera, I currently use Firefox and Edge (because nobody else admits to using Edge and I prefer to go where everyone else isn't). But I'm thinking that in the longer term that Vivaldi will become my default browser now that I've tried it. It took about half an hour to settle into the Vivaldi way of doing things.

The one thing I don't like about Vivaldi is the look and layout of the bookmarks pages / folders. Opera seemed to organise these much better. But no doubt I need to spend more time rearranging the look and feel of things, I'm sure there's plenty of configuration options available under the hood.

What I'm trying to say is that, now that a lot of us live half our life on the internet, the systematic organisation and categorisation of bookmarks is becoming the most important feature of a browser, at least for me. So any browser that can deliver improved access to and maintenance of a bookmark collection will win the day.

I haven't tried Brave so I can't comment. I've had a brief look, admire the concept and need to investigate further.

@ealatorre

I don't think there's the slightest chance of an @operamail.com address being available beyond the middle of next year. I'm happy to move away as despite the effort involved there are advantages. Moving away gives users the chance to renew or delete user accounts, logins, passwords and all the rest. The move away should reduce spam emails to a trickle once spam arrives at a defunct address. The vast majority of the spam email I receive is a consequence of hacks to Adobe and the like in the early 2010s. I'm looking forward to all this idiot crap slamming into a dead-end come June 21.

Even though I have 500+ operamail related addresses to move over to another address I'm finding that the process of updating logins has been worth the effort. There are plenty of usernames I don't need any more. And it's interesting to see how many companies take GDPR seriously, You know they do when you find they've deleted your user account information after a year or so without a log-in. And which other "service providers" can't even deal with a change in email address! I'll be taking my leave of these.

There's no way I'm going to feel aggrieved for the loss of a particular email address. It's inconvenient but so is much of life. I'd be more worried about the demolition of an ancient building but at the end of the day an email address is simply an electronic tag of slight consequence.

If I'm correct in suspecting that this is one of many overtures in future cyber hostilities to come then that only increases the incentive to move on from all things Opera related including the browser. I assume the new owners don't give two hoots for the preoccupations of Western users and that their attention is and will be entirely focused on the home market. Opera was good while it lasted, now is the time to move on.

@horseshrink

also check this link in another Opera forum:

@horseshrink said in Operamail future?:

@rif Opera is now owned by a Chinese investment consortium. FastMail is Australian. I wonder if evolving trade tensions between the two countries is a factor.

https://www.engadget.com/2016-07-18-opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-trade-china-commodities-tim/timeline-tension-between-china-and-australia-over-commodities-trade-idUSKBN28L0D8

See also this thread in the Opera for Linux forum. Might be user error or might be something else...

https://forums.opera.com/topic/47572/chinese-takeover-of-my-opera-on-ubuntu-18?_=1617717118702

@sgunhouse

The message I've received from Fastmail is unequivocal, there is no chance whatever that Operamail addresses will be returning to use. The fact that not all Operamail account holders have received an email informing them of the withdrawal of the address is not because Fastmail is testing the water. Instead they are informing account holders in batches so that they don't have to deal with responses all at once.

As with another poster, I suspect there's a political agenda involved here as nothing else would seem to explain the unwillingness of the Chinese company that owns the Opera browser and domain to hand administration of Operamail addresses to another party. The email address itself has long since lost any association with the Opera browser so there's no way that Operamail can be accused of tainting the "brand".

Operamail was a good email address to have while it lasted, but a change is as good as a rest and I've decided to run with it.

@boonstra I would assume there are quite a few of us - the operamail address has cachet which means those who have it want to hang on to it. It's my main email address and I would very much prefer stay put. OK so I've got a couple of years to move over to somewhereelsenotexactlywhatIwanted@anon.com but why break something that has worked perfectly well since time almost immemorial. There must be other solutions.

I tend to agree with the suggestion that this is a test run to gauge resistance - after all if the perpetrators were serious about it, then every single operamail account holder would have received the same email. And I can't believe it is that difficult to make alternative arrangements to continue with this email address.