E mail accounts

[Ed]

Moron that I am, when I switched ISP's I used their email service (optonline) naturally I am moving and I cannot use these guys. Question is what service do you folks use and why. Yahoo? Hotmail? Others. I appreciate all info and reccomendations.

[zakur]

I've tried many of the free webmail services over the years. My favorite, by far, is SAFe-mail (http://www.safe-mail.net/). Check it out.

[Luke T.]

Thanks, zakur! I just signed up for a safe-mail account.

Ed, I use Hotmail and get spammed beyond belief. Most of it is porn spam. We signed up my wife for an account, and registered her as a 13 year old to see if that would stop the porn spam. Well, it didn't. There has to be a law against that somehow. If there isn't, there should be.

A caveat about registering as someone underage at Hotmail: they require the credid card number of an adult.

[Luke T.]

Ed, I also use an email account from where I used to live. Go to Hamptonroads.com. It is free. I still get spam, but never any porn spam.

I have used that address for some business on the net, and so that is probably why I get the regular spam.

Hamptonroads is a little squirrley about file attachments, though. I had to tell my mother a couple hundred times that I wasn't getting any of the photos she kept emailing me of cute puppy pictures, or whatever, that she found on the internet before she finally got the message.

[Unas]

Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com) is an excellent free service that helps you control spam. You create a base address -- say, joeblow@spamgourmet.com. Then, when you give your address to a web site or a mail-order business, you can instantly (and without revisiting the Spamgourmet site) create an on-the-fly address like foobar.3.joeblow@spamgourmet.com. The .3. means that this address will only forward three messages to your "real" email address, and after that, it's dead. You can also tell Spamgourmet about "trusted senders" who are immune to the message limits on the address they use. I've used Spamgourmet for several years, and am very happy with the service.

[Luciana]

I've been using http://www.mail.com/ are a email forward service for 4 years and it has never let me down. I believe it's USD14.95. I've had many emails from ISPs in those years, but I keep this as my main one.

If I have to divulge my email in a website, I give the ISP's. When it gets too full of porn, I change ISP or request that only the shorname should be changed (shortname is what comes before the @). I only give my "main" email for sources I trust. I never got a single spam in my mail.com account. They're 100% reliable, unlike many other services.

[plugh]

It's my understanding that spammers generally don't target .ORG or .EDU accounts. So why not get a free account with that suffix?

http://www.inbox.net (they have a few .ORG domain names available)

http://www.australia.edu (ANYONE can get somesuch@australia.edu)

Just an idea.

[Luciana]

plugh: they do! From someone who has worked in a nonprofit, I guarantee you that happens. Not even .gov is safe from spammers.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by plugh
It's my understanding that spammers generally don't target .ORG or .EDU accounts. So why not get a free account with that suffix?

Take it from the penguin, that is definitely not true. They will SPAM any address they can get their greasy little hands on.

[Reginald]

Ive got three pop3 mail acounts and a 2 yahoo webmail accounts.

Theres a nice little "trick" here in the Uk, you can register for a "pay as you go" isp, they give you a pop3 mailbox and all you have to do is log on once every 90 days.

I get no spam on 4 of my 5 Acs. The reason is this, I never post to user groups, I never use the addresses when registering anything. I have the one mail AC (a yahoo one) that takes up all those duties, controlling it is a matter of deleting everything in that mail once a fortnight. I know that there is no real mail in it.

Generally speaking I find Yahoo mail rather nice. (for a web based mail that is).

[Philip]

I get less spam to my university account then to my EarthLink account, but not no spam. If I had used my university account to sign up for things online as much as I used my Earthlink account to do so, I'm sure I'd get a whole lot more spam at my university account.

[Peach Jr.]

I have both a Yahoo email and an ISP email (MSN). On my ISP email I get roughly 80 - 100 porno spams per day. On Yahoo I usually get 3 - 5 spams per day. The spam blocker does an adequate job in Yahoo (they put any spam-type stuff into a "bulk mail" folder). Plus it's free for 4.0 Mgb; if you ned more space, you can buy a larger box from them.

[Rat]

Buy a domain, or at least a subdomain. All mail to me gets to me. I get no spam (so far) and spam to my domain goes to another directory, for me to review when I have the patience. If spam comes to me, I can just change my user name. I'll still get the mail to my old address, but mail from proper fiends comes to the new one.

Cheers,
rAT.

[Soapy Sam]

I have a Freeserve POP3 account in the UK. Initially this was not accessible from abroad, so I got a basic hotmail account. Now active 4 years or so.
With the minimum mailbox size and no bells or whistles, this is free, so I'm not sure why LukeT was asked for a credit card number. (Remember you can register with hotmail in any part of the world. Doesn't have to be U.S.) Register in Russia if you like.

I keep a Hotmail dead letter drop- a valid address, but I only use it for junk.I give it to [pollsters, my employers, people I don't want to hear from. I never give it to anyone I do want to hear from.

My active Hotmail account gets about 4 spams a day, which filtering puts straight in junk, dumped daily. This figure varies. Last year it was up to 15. It dropped after the last MSN face change.

There seems to be huge variation in the amount of spam people get. All those who tell me they get dozens of porn spams daily also tell me they visit porn sites. Is there the tiniest chance of a causative relationship here?