Imminent closure of iiNet, TPG, Internode, Westnet, Netspace, and Ozemail email services

I have been contacted in the last week by several people, in relation to concerning communications they have received about the imminent closure of their TPG-owned email service. The closure is impacting users of iiNet, TPG, Internode, and Westnet email addresses.  Most likely it also impacts TPG-owned Netspace and Ozemail email accounts.

If you received such an email, please not ignore this email - it is not a scam.

​There is not much time for users of these email services to act to avoid losing their email accounts and, potentially, all their email history. ​You can't just do nothing (unless the email address is one that you no longer use, and that you are happy to see disappear).

The email communication provided to those who have iiNet, TPG, Internet, Westnet email address - and probably also to those with TPG-owned  Netspace and Ozemail email addresses - provides information about alternatives.
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You can choose to transfer your email service an alternative provider, called The Messaging Company.

Or you can scramble to set up an alternative email account and archive your email history (or migrate it to that alternative email provider) - all before the upcoming closure date. I think you only have a month or so do do this. (Does any one have a communication that provides a more specific date? Leave a comment below if you do.)

Here is what has been communicated about transferring to The Messaging Company:

"You can opt-in to transfer your (provider-name) email address to another Australian email provider, The Messaging Company. The Messaging Company will become your email provider and most importantly, you will not lose any emails, contacts or calendar events as part of the transfer.

​Choosing to transfer your email service to The Messaging Company - for now at least - will enable you to continue to use the same email address for at least 12 months, will give you a more time to work out what to do in relation to your future use of the email address, and will allow you time to archive any historic emails that might otherwise be lost. 

In the year or so that you have the free access to emails under The Messaging Company, I would suggest setting up a free gmail.com, outlook.com or icloud.com email address (if you don't already have one) and advising all contacts, online services and other companies of your change of email. 

Notifying everyone of your change of email address is a tedious process, I know, but it is worthwhile to get a better email service than that which has been offered by your current provider. And it is free.

A troubling thing about the proposed transfer of your mail service to The Messaging Company is that it has not been disclosed what the charge will eventually be for management of your mail by that business.

While you won't have to pay anything for the first year (until 15/9/24), charges will inevitably apply after that - but you won't be advised of pricing options until mid July 2024.  So you are better off using one of the other popular free email services listed above.

It is not obvious yet where The Messaging Company's mail data will be stored - although the comms do say that The Messaging Company is Australian, so one would hope your date will be stored in Australia.

An important thing to note as well is that you won't be able to keep any alias email addresses that you might have set up. Only the registered email username can be transferred to The Messaging Company. So if you use any aliases, you will need the change your email address with any businesses/online services that have been given that address.

Here are the support pages that outline the closure of each type of email service, as well as how to transfer to The Messaging Company.

• iiNet (and Ozemail)
• TPG
• Internode Email
• Westnet​​

I haven't been able to find the pages for Ozemail and Netspace. Googling of information about these email addresses simply takes you to iiNet pages - so I suspect that are also impacted in the same way as iiNet email addresses. 

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