Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

[Carol Haynes]

For a less technical user who doesn't want to deal with the whole domain regsitration/setup/maintenance process, I'd definitely recommend this service.

-Jimdoria (July 21, 2008, 09:31 AM)

If you choose the right registration company (that provides forwarding) setting up your own domain name is as simple as a payment with a credit card and then enter the email address to forward to. There is no need for any sort of hosting or setup at all and the only maintenance required is if you need to change the address mail is forwarded to. Many registration companies offer many (or even unlimited) numbers of forwarders for free - so you can have as many email aliases as you like forwarding wherever you like. As for webhosting all registration companies automatically forward the domain to a holding page until you do something (usually advertising their own services) - there is no obligation to do anything unless you want to.

Domain email forwarding can cost as little as $5 a year - or even free (with the caveats I mentioned in my previous post about free domains).

[cranioscopical]

For years now we've had my wife's e-mail through http://www.pobox.com. It's a service that simply receives e-mail and forwards it on to any address you specify. Change ISPs? Simply change the address your e-mail is forwarded to.

-Jimdoria (July 21, 2008, 09:31 AM)

I too use pobox, with satisfaction, but I see that some others of the suggestions here offer greater economy.  Hmm...

[embarq_lamont]

Indeed my (ISP provided) Earthlink address turned into smoke a year ago when the local DSL provided (he who owns the copper...) broke the agreement they'd had and sprung up as Embarq. Embarq claimed to be migrating all the Earthlink accounts to their servers, but my (allegedly converted) Embarq account never has worked. Thankfully I've always run my own mail server, which is the only reason I'm still getting mail.  ...However Gmail does make for a nice backup & I keep a few other disposable Email accounts for (Um...) other stuff...

-Stoic Joker (July 19, 2008, 02:14 PM)

Hello Stoic Joker,

I read your post that the Embarq mail has not worked for you.  If you need any help please email me with you phone number and I can send you information on how it works.  I was not sure if you had been informed when you transferred your email to Embarq, but earthlink.com could have continued to provide an email account for you for a fee.  The Embarq address is provided at no additional cost.  Please let me know if you had any additional assistance with you Embarq email.  Thank you for using Embarq, your complete communications solution.

Lamont L.
Embarq Customer Support
[email protected] 
For additional support please visit www.embarq.com/freetv or call 1-877-646-3282
Voice | Data | Internet | Wireless | Entertainment

[iphigenie]

I only trust my own domain, since everything else can go bankrupt, be bought, stop offering the service etc.

[f0dder]

Just a quick addition - you don't have to host a domain name in order to have an unchanging emaill address.

For years now we've had my wife's e-mail through http://www.pobox.com. It's a service that simply receives e-mail and forwards it on to any address you specify. Change ISPs? Simply change the address your e-mail is forwarded to.

The annual fee is really low, and you can even have multiple aliases for aggregation, etc. For a less technical user who doesn't want to deal with the whole domain regsitration/setup/maintenance process, I'd definitely recommend this service.

-Jimdoria (July 21, 2008, 09:31 AM)

Does that mean you have [email protected] email addresses? If so, what if pobox should ever go down?

I've got my own domain as well, and it's the only thing I'll ever trust. I've got a gigabyte of web space, unlimited email addresses et cetera, for less than $30/year.

[tinjaw]

In general, I believe that everybody should have their own domain name. It is so cheap as to be *more* costly *not* to have your own domain when you consider the hassles involved in *not* having one. For example, if you register a domain name with GoDaddy you get everything you need to insure that www.yourdomain.tld will always point to your website no matter where it is and that [email protected] will always be your email address. You will never again have to worry about giving people yet another "change of address" for your website or email address.

[jojo99]

That's the beauty of the method I use. Nobody sees the name+xyz@gmail account. In fact, they don't see Gmail at all. They see xyz@mydomain.com which is forwarded to [email protected] behind the scenes.

And with my host's control panel, it's not hard to mass edit all my forward-only e-mail accounts to change the forwarding address if my Gmail account finally is overrun with spam.

But let's put it this way: I've been using this method with my current Gmail account, which I've had for over two years now, and the only spam I ever get is an occasional newsletter from Xara, who just won't remove me from their mailing list.

-Deozaan (July 20, 2008, 08:18 PM)

But what do you do if you DID want to reply to the sender (it wasn't spam)?  Then they would know your address.

That is why I use www.spamex.com which for $10/year gives me 500 disposable addresses.  The emails are all forwarded to a real email address somewhere.  And if I reply to someone, they massage the header, so the addresses I reply from doesn't show up.  I can also send attachments up to 500k.  I have a bookmarklet on my links bar for when I want to bring up spamex and create a new address or access the interface.  Since the domain name contains the word spam, I have had some occasional problems with some ISP's refusing to forward mail to it.  Which is why spamex also allows the use of the xemaps.com name (spamex backwards)   I use spamex for all forum registrations, newsletters, etc.

I also have my own domain name where I have 2 addresses that goes to Outlook.  Only very trustworthy friends/people/companies get these addresses.  I hosted this through www.addaction.com because I can use my own domain name directly in outlook (send/receive) or I can use their email servers (which is what I use since they allow me to use an encrypted connection, port 995).

I have other email accounts also, such as 2 gmail accounts (Gmail has been very reliable but since Google scans all email looking for keywords to generate advertising for you, one wonders just how secure gmail really is), a Yahoo account (never use, always full of spam), an inbox.com account (hardly use but can send 50mb attachments), mail.com (hardly use) and an account at safe-mail.net (this is where spamex feeds to.  This account is always HTTPS but the free version only provides 3mb of storage.  However, I've gotten maybe 3 spam emails here in maybe 4 years of use).  Probably a few others lying around also... 

[Deozaan]

That's the beauty of the method I use. Nobody sees the name+xyz@gmail account. In fact, they don't see Gmail at all. They see xyz@mydomain.com which is forwarded to [email protected] behind the scenes.

And with my host's control panel, it's not hard to mass edit all my forward-only e-mail accounts to change the forwarding address if my Gmail account finally is overrun with spam.

But let's put it this way: I've been using this method with my current Gmail account, which I've had for over two years now, and the only spam I ever get is an occasional newsletter from Xara, who just won't remove me from their mailing list.

-Deozaan (July 20, 2008, 08:18 PM)

But what do you do if you DID want to reply to the sender (it wasn't spam)?  Then they would know your address.

-jojo99 (August 15, 2008, 04:46 AM)

Gmail lets you set up other accounts (Settings -> Accounts) to send mail as, and you can automatically have it use those accounts as the reply-to addresses for any e-mail sent to those addresses. Though you are limited to somewhere around 8 "accounts."

I don't usually reply to most of the mail I use this method for (signing up at websites that require e-mail addresses, etc.) but I'm currently using this method for my college e-mail address since it's so convoluted and long. Something like firstnamelastname(at)randomletter.college.edu. So I had to go into my college e-mail account and forward it all to my Gmail account, and I can reply using Gmail and they still think I'm in the stupid university web mail.

An even though I'm taking the time to use all these precautions with my own domain and Gmail, I have received, like you, perhaps 5 or less spams to this Gmail account since I started using it in 2006. I've been very careful with this account in the first place, not using it to sign up at dubious looking sites, but if I should accidentally let my e-mail address out to a spammer, I'll more than likely be able to just disable that single account on my domain and continue to be spam free once more.

[Tinman57]

  I disagree.     Gmail, Yahoo, etc, those "free" email accounts aren't nearly as secure as your ISP, not to mention every email you send out has ads injected into them and are tracked.  I've been reading for months about Google's privacy invasions through Gmail and their IE/Firefox add-ons.  Did anyone notice that Google just bought the largest ad-server/tracker in the world, ie: DoubleClick?  It's been heavily incorporated into Gmail.  Now isn't that special?

  Plus, most ISP's provide at least 5 email accounts, some up to 15.  Even if you only use one (as I), you can change any of your email addresses on-line, anytime you like.

  I've been using the same ISP email address for over 12 years now, and my ISP has been bought out 4 times since I first started.

  The free email outfits bounce a lot of good emails, their anti-spam options (if any) aren't as configurable as most ISP's.

  And as for customer service, do you have a local or toll-free number to call and talk to a technician about any problems you may have with the free services?  I do!

  What it boils down to is those "free" email accounts aren't so free when you consider the injected ads and privacy issues.  I think I'll stick with my ISP email address......   

[housetier]

hmm now when I send email from gmail to one of my other email accounts I do not see any injections of ads.

My internet is the best after all.

[Carol Haynes]

I haven't seen any ads in gmails either!

I have seen ads in a number of ISP based emails though.

It is strange that people wonder which is more secure - all ads pass through company servers and almost all companies use advertising to bolster their revenue ... none more so than ISPs who need to raise money to support their subsidised prices. We all forget that ISPs (even the expensive ones) don't cover their costs by monthly subscriptions. I bet every email that passes through their servers is used to collect advertising data anonymously.

Google may not be perfect but at least they are very up front about what they are doing and they provide a good stable service. Google also provide secure https access which is more than any ISP I have ever used. ISPs generally send emails over the internet totally unprotected in plain text or HTML so that anyone can read them - that goes for Yahoo and Hotmail too - how secure is that?

[Redrik]

As usual Carol's on the ball. 

I've run my own domain for about 15 years, sometimes hosting and sometimes forwarding to an ISP account. Over time spammers forced the creation of several free accounts to sign up for stuff. This was a popular notion in those days.

The problem with that is I need to know which email address relates to which newsletter or software purchase, sometimes years later. I used to keep a copy of the registration confirmations in sub-folders of a folder called "Registrations" which was automatically backed up in several places. It worked well but I got lazy and just saved the downloaded emails in my email software. (Usually Thunderbird or variations.) This worked fine and was always backed up but I'm a backup fanatic and try out pretty much anything I find. Sometimes I sync instead of backing up which tends to lose all my email, carefully saved for maybe a year or two.

Now I use Gmail, because I can't stuff it up. It also handles spam almost perfectly. In theory I'll never lose my Registration info again!

For the last year or so I've used a free address provided by Fanmail for all sign ups, using my own domain address for people I know. There has been no noticeable spam to the Fanmail address. In fact, over many years I've rarely, if ever, been spammed as a result of signing up for something (and I've signed up for a lot).

There used to be a bit of spam due to putting a business web address in the phone book but mostly it's ISP related. The bigger the ISP I use the greater the volume of spam, and I never use or give out an ISP provided address.

For me Gmail has been a godsend. (Yahoo was far less effective.)

For anyone wondering why I now use a big ISP, no-one else can give me Wireless Broadband. Satellite is unreliable and slow and dialup is just slow. The trade off is living in a beautiful and remote wilderness.