Are free email services worth it?

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I do believe that with all the new technology this article pretty much has become obsolete.
You have your email client setup in your computer. It grabs mails off of the air through POP3 or IMAP or something like that. Everything is backed-up locally, including all your contacts and emails and everything you'd ever want, even a built-in spam filter.
You have your email encryption apps. If you are sending important stuff through email, encrypt it. Or you can just use attachments that are password-protected. Don't send non-encrypted sensitive information.
This article does say that it was posted in 2004, which makes me very, very happy. I shudder to think that somebody still seriously thinks that a paying email account is worth his money now... if he does, he really needs to stop wasting his money.

Somehow the contents of my INBOX were completely deleted today (11/21/08). My account, which stared out at netscape [personal email address removed] years ago, is now on AIM. So the address [personal email address removed] also works for this same account. Anyhow, I am finding just about nothing online that helps. The contents of my INBOX are not in my trash folder, as I already checked. I think the problem is related to deleting the trash folder contents. Thats when the INBOX contents suddenly disappeared. Looks like a lost cause, but before I give up can you help? Email me directly please! The clock is running!

Hi, Leo.

Despite my aversion to Microsoft, I set up my first free e-mail account with Hotmail in February 2002 after learning that the 100-person local office of a now-defunct software company (acquired by HP in 2005) would be shut down and its operations outsourced to a firm in India.

(I got a 30-day notice that I would be losing my job as senior technical writer -- and permission to go to interviews during work hours -- but after being assured for the previous 30 days that the documentation department would not be affected by the lay-offs and would relocate to a smaller office space.)

Had I not been numb with shock, I would have created a separate "job-hunting" e-mail address with my ISP, which offers 5 e-mail addresses per account -- including the primary address.

An e-mail address on one's resume from a free e-mail service is considered unprofessional, and -- at least for a while -- many companies inundated with resumes actually screen out resumes that have e-mail addresses with free services (a "snobbery-based" filtering system).

At the time, Gmail was nonexistent. Initially, Gmail accounts were "limited" and by invitation only. It was simple to overcome this marketing-based "limitation," however, simply by signing up for an account and having Google send an activation code via SMS to one's cell phone: I had a Gmail account three months before Google notified me that I was "off the waiting list" and could sign up for a free Gmail account (of which I now have a few, each for a specific purpose).

(I will digress further by mentioning unscrupulous early Gmail account recipients selling or auctioning accounts, abusing the 50 invitations that one gets after using an account, which are solely marketing ploys now that Gmail accounts are readily available.)

Although I do still use that first Hotmail account to apply for jobs and update on-line resumes, I stay in touch with legitimate recruiters and employers via telephone, although initial contacts were made via this Hotmail account, in response to on-line resumes and applications, or e-mail messages with my resume attached.

If I am working on a salaried or contract basis writing documentation or designing Web sites, I often forget to check that Hotmail account. If the account is not accessed for 30 days, Microsoft (in a draconian effort to sell paid Web-mail subscriptions) purges ALL new, unread, or saved messages!

One positive aspect of that Hotmail account is that "spam bots" crawl on-line job and resume listing sites/databases, from Monster.com to Dice.com. The result is a Hotmail account that receives literally hundreds of "spam" messages per day now. There are also IT recruiting "farms" that use 'bots to search sites such as Dice.com for key words, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses: I am inundated daily with automated e-mail inquiries from recruiters from cities all over India.

These messages are not about positions doing technical writing or Web design, but are the result of an automated "hit" on a keyword in my resume, such as "Oracle" or "Perl." Every few months, I go through about a week of receiving phone calls from these very firms about short-term contract positions (sometimes two weeks or less) anywhere in the United States (often 2,000 or more miles away) based upon key words in such automated searches. I cannot understand the callers and they do not understand why I am not interested in relocating thousands of miles for a five-day contract position that would not pay enough for one-way airfare and for which I am not qualified. (Just because I administered a database server for documentation from 2000-2002 (with no demand in 2008 for skills specific to MS SQL Server 2000 and Oracle 8i) hardly qualifies me to administer Oracle 11g EE!

"Private" or "restricted" on-line resumes do not get responses, but "open" resumes (especially on non-specialized job sites) definitely generated spam, clueless inquiries, and unwanted phone calls.

For job-hunting purposes, I suggest Gmail if a person is determined to use a free e-mail service. Gmail's spam filtering is quite decent, the 'gmail.com' domain does not suffer from the professional stigma of most other free e-mail services, storage is vast, one can access Gmail via POP3/SMTP and IMAP, and Gmail accounts are not purged.

Setting up a Web-based account is also advantageous for travelers who cannot access their corporate or personal ISP's SMTP servers, but -- as several people have stated -- especially if one is a consultant or does contract work, in addition to salaried work, registering one's own domain -- with a professional Web site, and e-mail address using one's own domain, is a reasonable career enhancement. Fortunately, Network Solutions is no longer the only legitimate domain registrar that most people can recall, although so-called "free domains" are not true TLDs and should be avoided at all costs for professional use!

SO WORTH IT, IN FACT, THERE IS A WEB SITE YOU CAN GO TO, www.bugmenot.com IT IS SO COOL, GET USERNAME AND PASSWORDS(only by those who have submitted them)AND SCROLL DOWN AND YOU WILL FIND BUGMENOT DISPOSABLE EMAIL, SO COOL

I have live mail and Yahoo mail. While I don't have any "important" e-mails so far I have had no problems and almost no spam. Windows live mail have wonderful feature that allows you to not only block spam but bounce it back to sender. As to support, no problem with Yahoo and live mail might take longer but so far they always helped eventually. I would recommend both.

is incredimail any good

This article and comments are useful. But are there any affordable email services out there?

If you don't want the stigma of a free mail sounding email you can try gmx email. It's a free German web portal with decent free email. You get a gmx.de account which you can update for free to gmx.net, very professional sounding free pop and smtp access with a reasonable 1GB of mail storage. Downside: the web site is only in German and you'll have to get a German speaking friend to help. And you'd need to fake a German address, (can google for that). Hmmm maybe I could charge 20 bucks per address and help sign people up :=)

What the heck if ur interested you can reach me at hotmailsucks gmx de (the at sign and the dot left out to fool the bots) I set that address up a couple of days ago as a contact address for people to report problems with Live Mail.

But seriously, is it really a problem getting a job using a free mail address. I've used free mail for over 10 years because I like the permanency they provide. Although I do stay away from hotmail and yahoo for job hunting as the names do sound cheesy. I've never used the address provided by my ISP as that locks you in to one ISP.

I read here that somebody closed their Yahoo account down and wondered why their friends' emails weren't bouncing back. Well, that's the least of their problems. Once your account closes then your email address name is up for grabs. What if someone who has your old address writes you at that address. It will go to the new holder of that email address. I have a yahoo account that I don't use. An old friend whom I hadn't contacted in years wrote me there. I was so glad I checked it once every 2 weeks or so just to keep it alive. Once you've closed it the only solution to that would be to write to your old yahoo address every so often to see if someone has taken the name and if so ask them if they would kindly forward any email addressed to you and hope that they will be helpful. Bottom line, in stead of closing an account, inform all of your contacts you've closed the account and wait at least a year before actually closing it, checking weekly and informing any one who writes about your new address.

In regard to a recent posting by a different Mark, he recommended not closing a free email account for at least a year so that you could notify any people you might have missed in announcing your change of address.

In addition to simply checking the old account periodically, you can set up an autoresponder (Vacation Response on Yahoo) to tell them of the change immediately after they send a message to that old account. On Yahoo, look for Vacation Response on the Mail Options page. On Gmail it is called Vacation responder and it is on the Settings page.

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