Sky's Botched Google Migration In the UK

An anonymous reader writes "Rupert Murdoch-owned British ISP Sky is migrating their customers to the Google Apps platform, and the customer experience is terrible. Their 1 million customers were told that they need to change their client settings to enable SMTP Authentication and other settings on a certain date — but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but if you don't do it on the date your e-mail will also break. Oh, and if you're a POP user you also need to enable that manually in the 'Skoogle' interface, as seemingly they chose not to run a system-wide command to allow it for all users. In addition, if you want help then you're pretty much on your own. One user has made 7 support calls and still not been able to access his e-mail since the migration. Hardly surprising that the story has made the papers with their help-desk in meltdown. It does make you wonder why they simply didn't put proxy servers in place to proxy the new service by modifying the old settings in the network and give their customers time to switch over without their e-mail breaking in the meantime. Or even a simple ActiveX tool to help out the less technical users."

Hardly surprising the story has made the papers

[niceone]

Might have surprised Mr Murdoch - he thought he owned all the papers.

Re:general result of change for the sake of progre

[value_added]

Looks more like a user manual than a quick set of instructions for a "simple change".

I had a quick look at the PDF, and I'll agree that while it's not pretty on-screen, reading a printed copy wouldn't be too bad. At least no more onerous than browsing the brochure-type instructions you get with many consumer products (Linksys routers, for example).

For comparison's sake, the similar changeover by ATT for their customers was handled by a Yahoo-bot (I'm not making that up) email advisory:

Dear AT&T Yahoo! Customer:

We noticed that you are accessing email using non-secure settings in your
email software.

We would like to ensure that your AT&T Yahoo! Member ID, password, and
email messages are transmitted securely between your mail software (such
as Outlook or Outlook Express) and the AT&T Yahoo! Mail servers. In order
to meet this need, please enable [1]SSL via the [2]instructions that are
available on the Help site. Since multiple email notifications have
already been sent out about this, we request that you please make the
necessary changes immediately. Remember, you need to make these changes if
you want to continue to send/receive email using a mail client. Thank you
for your cooperation, AT&T Yahoo! Customer Support

References
      1. http://helpme.att.net/glossary.php#147 [att.net]
      2. http://helpme.att.net/article.php?item=10918 [att.net]
      3. http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/beacons/details.html [yahoo.com]
      4. http://att.yahoo.com/privacy [yahoo.com]

A bit simpler, I guess.

Then again, the notice makes no mention of or otherwise provide a link to download their Equifax certificate. And where the hell are the OpenSSL instructions, like using c_rehash, or verifying things with s_client!!??? You'd think they could at least have included a quick howto on configuring fetchmail to use SSL certs, but nooooo!

I guess whatever your knowlege level is, you can always find a reason to bitch and moan about things being too complicated. ;-)

Re:What has Linux to do with this?

[sortius_nod]

Amen to that.

PS nutcase AC, your statement makes no sense. Defragging a drive to be partitioned will not ensure data integrity. Like me trying to explain this to you, it's a futile effort with no measurable gains.