So I posted a message on the EG Patch Facebook page at around 1 p.m., asking readers who use Cox email if their service was out and for how long. Two hours later, 24 comments, the sum of which was: YES! and TOO LONG!

"I really depend on my email, so now I have had to contact people that I sent things out to and am waiting for a response," said Kathy Crouse.

"Since early Friday afternoon and it's beyond old at this point," said Chris Thompson.

Rhode Island is only one of many states affected. Other states include Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia.

The problem for users began Friday. Reader Mary MacIntosh reposted a message that appeared on the Cox website at noon:

Our teams are making progress in our email service restoration efforts. Through our investigation, we have isolated the cause of the failure to the email system platform which ultimately affected both the primary and secondary failover (back-up) systems. Currently, all incoming messages are queued in our system and we expect to deliver messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring the systems back online. Teams across all levels of our organization remain intensely focused on the restoration efforts. Unfortunately, we do not expect services to be restored today. We do understand the impact this is having on our customers, which is why we have deployed every resource possible to working this issue. While we are focused on restoring email access as quickly as possible, the multiple components and processes that make up our email system require care, and some time, to bring them back online. Our next scheduled update is 3 p.m., however we will update this alert with new information as we have it.

If anyone else has information, please leave it in a comment below.