Carmen is concerned that Verizon sold its AOL service. How will that affect her, and could she take her AOL email to another provider? Leo says that rather than tying herself to an ISP email provider, use Gmail or a separate provider. Gmail is free, and you can transfer your email over to it, even forward your AOL service. Leo likes to use FastMail, a paid service that has all those features and more.
Kirk is an AOL user with Microsoft Outlook, and he wants to know how he can back up his email. His email PST file is 13.9GB! AOL recently eliminated all of his 2020 emails and he wants to make sure he has a copy, just in case. Kirk is also concerned that his email doesn't appear on his iPad. Leo says it's a good time to get out of AOL and try another service. Leo recommends Gmail.
Kim changed her AOL password last month, but now AOL won't accept the new password. What can she do? Leo says that Verizon owns AOL right now, but they really don't care about them. Gmail is a much better option. But Leo says that email is so important, it really pays to actually pay for the service. Leo recommends FastMail.It's around $20 a year.
Kurt has a three-year-old Dell XPS laptop that he calls a "marvelous" computer. But he's been having trouble lately after a recent update and Microsoft Outlook. He waited to update to make sure that the updates were OK. 2004, for instance, was a nasty update. 20H2 has been a good one, but Kurt had to update 2004 before updating. But now he's getting send/receive errors requiring reinserting passwords for AOL, even though LastPass does it. Leo says that there are two servers he uses for checking email ... inbound and outbound. SMTP servers (outbound) will require a different port.
Ben has a twelve-year-old Mac that runs Entourage for his email client with AOL. But it has stopped working. Then it started working again a month later on its own, then stopped receiving mail a month later. Leo suspects that AOL may be the culprit. But also, Entourage hasn't been updated in years because it was discontinued by Microsoft in favor of Outlook. But Leo doesn't like that option either because both store email in one giant file, forcing Ben to rebuild it when it gets corrupted. It's a terrible way to do email.
Dirk is now using the new Samsung A50 mobile phone, but he's having issues with his AOL mailing app now. Leo suspects that the settings are wrong in the app, and you need to google your AOL app settings so you can input the right ones. Here's how - https://www.e-mailsettings.com/android/aol-mail-setup or https://help.aol.com/articles/aol-mail-mobile-mail
Sue is on AOL and is having issues with "Guce." What is that? Leo says it's adware by AOL that seeks to bypass adblockers in her browser. Guce is owned by Verizon, which also owns AOL and they don't like users using ad blockers or reading emails without ads. So it will redirect her to Guce.advertising.com. But many consider it a browser hijack, which would turn it into malware. Go into the browser settings under extensions and see if there's an adblocker installed. She can either turn off the ad blocker, white list Guce or better yet, GET OUT OF AOL! Leo recommends Gmail.
Karen's computer got taken over by a scammer who convinced her that he was from AOL when she was having trouble with her account. Leo says that gaining control of her computer remotely likely gave him that control and the only thing she can do is backup her data, format her hard drive, and reinstall windows from a known, good source. If one needs help from AOL, contact them directly here - https://help.aol.com/products/new-aol-desktop
Harry is with Verizon and he wants to get a Blackberry 9900 phone for AOL since it doesn't work on his 9930. Leo says it won't work. Verizon was a CDMA based network and the 9900 won't work on that. So it would be a waste of money to do so. Leo says he should just change his email so that he can use just about any other phone.
Pauline is concerned that with Verizon buying AOL, her Yahoo Mail will go away. How can she back it up? Leo says that using POP3 mail is essentially backing up her email to her hard drive because it downloads the email directly to her computer. So it's already backed up.
