In case you missed the news, the AMSAT mail alias service will be terminated on August 1st, 2024. The popular feature permitted mail directed to yourcallsign@amsat.org to be forwarded to any email address you chose. This feature has been a staple of satellite enthusiasts around the world for decades.

A recent AMSAT news bulletin announced the decision to end the service citing nefarious activity as the reason for termination:

Unfortunately, the unchecked rise in domain name hacking and email account high-jacking has made it impossible to sustain this service at a cost-effective level. The number of callsign@amsat.org email accounts that had been hijacked and converted to zombie spam account over the years had led many internet service providers and gateway centers to ban all @amsat.org email addresses, including those business accounts of AMSAT officers and officials. The tireless efforts of AMSAT’s all volunteer IT staff has worked for years to repair much of the damage, but AMSAT still get complaints from members who are not getting their personal emails, ANS bulletins or AMSAT-BB posts because of persistent delivery problems.

Mail aliases were once a popular way of supporting an organization while providing a relatively short, and easy to remember email address. Birthed in an era where aliasing was simple and few problems encountered, it flourished. Bad actors eventually took note of this large collection of addresses and problems followed. In the eternal war on spoofing and spamming, service providers build complex filters to trap and eliminate the most troublesome of these and one tool has been to simply ban email from entire domains. When that happens, you stop receiving email and eventually, contact AMSAT to complain about something over which they have little control.

Imagine the task of reaching out to every Internet Service Provider, big and small, globally, to explain that “amsat.org” was a legitimate concern and requesting the spam ban be lifted.

It has come to the point where the AMSAT volunteer IT staff can no longer keep up with the maintenance requirements to keep the alias mail list clean and to work with email gateways to remove blocks. And, after considerable investigation into alternative paid email services, AMSAT leadership decided that the money required to keep an email alias system alive would be better spent on building and flying satellites for its members.

This is why we can’t have nice things. The AMSAT email service has been a ham radio staple for more than two decades and it’s too bad it must be discontinued.

Persons using the Mail Alias Service should begin to migrate to different email accounts so they do not lose receipt of personal emails, AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins, AMSAT-BB posts, or official messages from AMSAT itself. Members are especially asked to make sure they are NOT using a callsign@amsat.org as their registered email address in the AMSAT membership portal. Members can easily change their registered member email address by logging into the portal and updating their profile.

The forwarding will end on August 1, 2024 and plans need to be made now to migrate from those addresses or risk losing email.