Another entry in the decline of #IEEE.

Until now, my IEEE membership has come with an @ieee.org email account. For decades, it was an alias I could forward wherever I wanted. Then it was an account I could forward. Then it was some kind of Google thing (never really understood that) and I had to log in to google to send emails to mailing lists.

Today I was informed that they are separating the email accounts from the main subscription and charging $40/year for them. There is no option for an alias.

There are a lot of other google-related things that fee includes, none of which I use, and none of which I even knew were being provided.

All of my ieee-related services - access to collaboration tools, membership in technical committees, journal and society subscriptions, access to Overleaf - is all mediated through this account. They have literally spent the last four years forcing people who aren't members to get these emails in order to use freely accessible online services.

I am so frustrated and I'm struggling to know how to get this across to them, since the last email I sent to their help desk got a "you must give us personal information to prove your humanity before we will respond" auto-reply.

I *hate* this timeline.