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Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

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mouser:
My internet service provider just got bought out by another company and decided they would discontinue the old email addresses.  So now i have to go around to every site i've ever signed up at and change my email address.

So some advice:


* Never actually use your ISP provided email address when you sign up at places, and never give it out to friends and family.
* Set up another email account like gmail or one through your own domain name+hosting, and use that.
* It's fine to just forward email sent to your other account to your isp account, and then do everything from there, but the key is not to ever become dependent on an email address that is tied to your isp, since it's not reliable as a permanent address.

housetier:
The address might also become unavailable when one decides to switch ISPs for whatever reason.

I "lost" a friend this way: he kept using his ISP email address for years even though I literally begged him to sign up at one of the many mane freemail providers. Now he's switched to a different ISP and I no longer can email him.

Please do use a reliable freemail provider for your email stuff. mouser's advice is VERY GOOD!

Carol Haynes:
I agree (got stung by this years ago and was the primary reason to get my own domain name).

Having said that be careful of freebie email too - Microsoft now have live.com instead of hotmail - how long will hotmail be supported? All the talk of yahoo being sold raises the question of what will happen to yahoo.... addresses in yeras to come if they get sold out. Same could happen with gmail (though not likely in the short term).

If you buy your own domain (dirt cheap) and choose the company you buy it from carefully you will probably get free forwarding so that email can be forwarded to any address you want to use. GMail allows you to send email from your domain based email addresses as well as gmail addresses so you can send and receive from you own domain name for free. If the usual email method fails, changes name or goes bust you just change the forwarders on your domain and keep the same email address. Many companies selling domain names allow you to have many email addresses based on your domain for nothing so long as you keep the domain with them.

40hz:
Excellent advice.   :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

My original ISP was SNET. Which got bought out by SBC Global. Which got bought out by AT&T. Rather than deal with more changes, I now use a GMail account I created just for registrations. With all that free storage space it's easy to keep a permanent save file of all my registrations (except financial institutions). It's also good place to keep software and product warranty correspondence.

For one-off product key registrations - or for places I have no intention of going back to - I suggest using a disposable e-mail account (via TrashMail.net et al) and pointing them to a second GMail account that you just purge every couple of months.  8)

TucknDar:
Good advice, indeed.

I feel pretty safe using gmail, but getting your own domain is probably the best solution. And you get to pick your address too :)

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