Blocking of Commercial Email

The Navy and Marine Corps as of 18th of October has blocked all overseas access to commercial email accounts from government computers. Which I thought was going on the last time I was over in Iraq but we had an internet café on base that was run by a civilian company. But from what this article says, they’re also blocking the same sites at MWR’s and Libraries. I’ve had my same hotmail account since the early 90’s when they first started and have since moved all of my emails (except for work) to some form of internet based email. Not that I didn’t like my service providers but I moved around too much and changing email addresses every year or so wasn't worth the grief. It was too much of a hassle to change my email addresses for 200 or so people and all of my bills.

The problem I see with this is the last time I went over there the junior Marines didn’t have personal email access through a mil account and the Marines on the ground doing the house to house rarely saw a “work” government computer, just the computers at the internet cafes. If hotmail, gmail and yahoo’s of the world are cut off, what forms of contact with the outside world do they have? Plus most of them don't have the paid accounts with the storage, the accounts are sure to lock up after filling up with spam which I know will take a day or two just to get back in order upon return stateside.

Yes, I know, we’re a bunch of wusses compared to even a decade ago when hardly anyone had email and the only written communication was with pen and paper. I'm sure there are old farts that are thinking “back in the day we didn't have any of that…” Well we’re not back in the day, we’re today and most of us military folk are now high speed, low drag, internet surfing, blogging, emailing geeks who do everything; pay bills, entertain ourselves, write letters, fall in love and out of, watch stocks, live, though this medium. Being stuck with one email account that will be shut down following the deployment? Sounds like a nightmare for us that live and breath online.