I used to use Outlook for email. Now I only use online services for email.
GMail (free, ad supported)
gmail.comI've since gone to GMail, which solves a couple of problems I used to have:
- Quickly searching a large repository of email
- Accessing my email history from anywhere
- Offloading the storage from my hard drive
- Also, Firefox starts faster than Outlook so I can get to my mail faster
POBox (cheap)
pobox.comPOBox solves another couple of problems. It pre-processes email, mostly for forwarding. I find this useful because I can tell the world about my POBox address, and then when I want to change email providers, I just reconfigure my POBox account to forward to the new provider. POBox also provides great (I mean GREAT) spam protection using a combination of filters and black holes, preventing crap from even getting forwarded to your actual account.
Spamcop (free or cheap)
spamcop.net (Not
spamcop.com!)
Before GMail, I used Spamcop as my main email repository.
Spamcop provides some satisfaction to people who are outraged about spam by giving them something productive to do about it. Spamcop automatically analyzes email headers to expose spammers' tricks. Once you've identified a spam, you can report it. Spamcop gathers reports from its users and reports email abuse to the ISPs being used by the spammers, hopefully to get them kicked out of their account. Spamcop also uses this information to maintain a black hole list used by POBox!
Spammotel (free)
spammotel.comIf you are ever asked for an email address by someone who might spam you later, you should give them a disposable address. When you register your real email address (or POBox address) with SpamMotel, you can then generate as many disposable email addresses as you want, one for each suspicious recipient. I've got several hundred of these disposable addresses, but interestingly, I rarely get spam on them. Maybe "@spammotel.com" deters the spammers. But I suspect that spammers get email addresses from domain registrations and web trolling.
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