io.com is going away. It's funny how upsetting this is to me. I've been jimm@io.com since 1994 or so—maybe a year or two earlier than that. You know what I'm worried about most? All those open source projects, emails, and other digital resources that point to jimm@io.com are going to be pointing nowhere in a month. It feels like my online identity is being stolen. Except it's not being stolen, of course—merely recalled.
A Slashdot commenter also pointed out the potential security risk: "Think about it, among other things whoever owns that domain now will be able to intercept all mail to io.com accounts, and with the quickness and suddenness of the transfer not everyone's who uses those addresses is going to be able to completely transition off them before the transfer happens"
io.com was the ISP run by Steve Jackson Games—the company raided by the Secret Service because they were writing a role playing game called "Hacker". SJ Games fought the Secret Service and won. I think the EFF grew out of that case.
io.com was bought by prismnet.com years ago. PrismNet changed hands a few times. The last guy who sold it to the current owner (for $20) didn't sell the io.com domain. He kept it but let them use it until July 1, 2011. My guess is he wants to sell it to I/O Digital for a skillion dollars.
From now on, I'm jim@jimmenard.com. Also jim.menard@gmail.com, or jimm@prismnet.com. Time to start wrapping my head around being jim@jimmenard.com instead of jimm@io.com. Bye, jimm@io.com.
io.com is dead. Long live io.com.
