# Best email account



## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

What email do you use and why?

I have had the same Hotmail account since 1997. A while back they changed it to Outlook. Now they want me to re register or they will cancel my account.

I know, Hotmail ha ha ha. So it seems like a good time to make a change.


----------



## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

Gmail. It's simple and reliable, and you can have 2-factor authentication to prevent hacking.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I've been using gmail for almost 10 years. At the time, it blew every other service out of the water. Now there is less difference. Still, I have no complaints. It works very well. I never have to worry about filling up my inbox, it integrates well with my (android) phone, the and user experience is pretty much flawless.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Those who advocate for gmail usually say nothing about how this company scans the contents of your personal email (including that sent to and received from non-gmail users), archives it and uses it to advertise to you, among other things.

It would be like if the royal mail opened your mail before delivering it to you, reading the contents and trying to figure out what you were talking about and then stuff the envelope with ads, repack it and send it on to you. If they did that people would be in an uproar yet say nothing when gmail does it?

I believe other "free" email services do similar things.

Use Outlook with your ISP's mail server and email address on their mail server & webmail when away from your computer. Far better than all this gmail snooping nonsense and my ISP has excellent spam filtering. I pay for this service, may as well use it.


----------



## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

i use gmail and outlook.com
gmail is more full featured and offers more complex options
outlook.com is simpler and cleaner and easier to learn and use but less sophisticated in terms of features

as far as ads go on gmail, there are plenty of ways to just turn them off
gmail has excellent, first rate spam filtering


----------



## nathan79 (Feb 21, 2011)

You might as well stick with Hotmail. There's not much difference between that and its competitors. Unless you want to switch to something like your ISP + Outlook Express.

I use my Hotmail and my ISP's (Shaw) mail pretty much equally. I used to favour Hotmail because it integrated with Windows Live Messenger, but that functionality has been dropped since Microsoft replaced Messenger with Skype.

Between Hotmail and Shaw, Hotmail has the better web interface, but Outlook Express beats any web service.

I also have Gmail and Yahoo, but only use them when I have to.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

the-royal-mail said:


> Those who advocate for gmail usually say nothing about how this company scans the contents of your personal email (including that sent to and received from non-gmail users), archives it and uses it to advertise to you, among other things.


They all do it. Remember, Microsoft is just as deep in bed with government as Google is (as came out in the summer Snowden leaks).

E-mail is inherently open and readable. If you want privacy in email, you must use encryption - like PGP, GPG, or SMIME.

But if you're not using encryption, just about everyone is going to scan your personal data out of emails, whether its your ISP, Microsoft, Google or someone else (or all of them)


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

An option many people aren't aware of is Gmail + a standard desktop application like Mozilla Thunderbird. Just look up configuring gmail for IMAP and SMTP access.

This gives you full access to your gmail box without any advertising. Just the old fashioned, standard email experience like the ISP accounts we all used to have. It still gives you the benefits of all the great spam filtering, and you can still log into webmail when you're traveling.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> Those who advocate for gmail usually say nothing about how this company scans the contents of your personal email (including that sent to and received from non-gmail users), archives it and uses it to advertise to you, among other things.
> 
> It would be like if the royal mail opened your mail before delivering it to you, reading the contents and trying to figure out what you were talking about and then stuff the envelope with ads, repack it and send it on to you. If they did that people would be in an uproar yet say nothing when gmail does it?
> 
> ...


I'm much less concerned about google analyzing the content of my email than the NSA. 

By the way, the NSA is reading your ISP email as well. 

And the downside of using an ISP email account is that you're married to that ISP. I use gmail to keep portability.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

In fact, if you use Mozilla Thunderbird with gmail, you can then set up SMIME encryption which is built into Thunderbird. Exchange crypto keys with your friend and now you can send private messages. Even though the e-mails pass through google's servers, they will be unable to decrypt them and therefore can't scan or mine the contents. Total privacy.

To try and achieve privacy against government spying, generate the largest keys you can (8192 bit RSA).


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

james4beach said:


> An option many people aren't aware of is Gmail + a standard desktop application like Mozilla Thunderbird. Just look up configuring gmail for IMAP and SMTP access.
> 
> This gives you full access to your gmail box without any advertising. Just the old fashioned, standard email experience like the ISP accounts we all used to have. It still gives you the benefits of all the great spam filtering, and you can still log into webmail when you're traveling.


I find the web app better than email clients. Search is lightning fast. Compared to using outlook at work... (5 mins to search a tenth as much email as my gmail account).


----------



## Ag Driver (Dec 13, 2012)

I have been a Gmail user since 2004, back when you required an invite. I absolutely love all Google products. I have not been hacked once and I use one e-mail for everything. A great thing about Gmail is the 15GB of storage, plus 25MB attachment limit. If that isn't enough, fear not, you can always use Google Drive to share/attach 10GB's! I found it also filter spam MUCH better than hotmail ever did, granted I'm sure it has got better over time -- I haven't used Hotmail in years! Since gmail was recognizable under .net passports, I scrubbed my Hotmail account.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Sure the web interface is good - search is awesome. I find the web experience with gmail has gotten a bit more cluttered in recent years.

A big advantage of running a client like Thunderbird is that you don't have to keep the web browser open all the time for e-mail. The danger with keeping the web browser open is that once you're logged into gmail, it facilitates tracking of all your other web activities. For instance even canadianmoneyforum.com interfaces to google-analytics.com. Almost every web site does. This means that Google and advertisers can track you through every web site you visit... Google knows you're on CMF, for example, and how much time you spend here. When you're on CMF (and tons of other web sites) Google also knows exactly who you are, since you're also logged into your gmail account.

To break that link and get more privacy from Google & advertisers, you can run your e-mail in a standalone app that isn't web browser based.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Google already knows who I am. I've come to terms with it--it seems like a reasonable exchange of consideration to me.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Yeah Google already knows who you are. How about all the advertisers they partner with, do you like that each one of them (and each new advertiser that floats along) learns about you too?


----------



## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

I use both gmail and hotmail.

Hotmail is personal use, Gmail is for the blog. I answer to both 

I actually prefer hotmail over Gmail because I hate being targeted by Google for everything.


----------



## Retired Peasant (Apr 22, 2013)

Rusty, what exactly are they asking you to do? I've used hotmail since 97ish as well. When they changed the web interface to Outlook, my hotmail address continued to work (and still does). There was no requirement to register for a @Outlook.com email address. There were strong suggestions, but there is no requirement to do so. You can continue to use the hotmail address.

FWIW, I also use the email address provided by my ISP, and I have another one through a professional organization. They all serve different purposes, and I use different clients for each (Outlook for the ISP, Outlook.com website for hotmail, and another website for the third.


----------



## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

Retired Peasant said:


> Rusty, what exactly are they asking you to do? I've used hotmail since 97ish as well. When they changed the web interface to Outlook, my hotmail address continued to work (and still does). There was no requirement to register for a @Outlook.com email address. There were strong suggestions, but there is no requirement to do so. You can continue to use the hotmail address.
> 
> FWIW, I also use the email address provided by my ISP, and I have another one through a professional organization. They all serve different purposes, and I use different clients for each (Outlook for the ISP, Outlook.com website for hotmail, and another website for the third.


"We are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of accounts on our database system. Please reconfirm your email account so that it will be recorded in our new database system.
We need you to reply and fill in the information below within one week, or you will lose your account permanently.

*Username
*Password 
*Date of birth 
*Country or Territory.

Here are some ways to help you manage your account after you reconfirm it.

* Create an archive - Set up a folder on your PC’s hard drive where you can save large attachments, then just delete them from your inbox. You’ll still have them, and your inbox will be much smaller.
*Make your filters work for you - Did you know you can set up your Outlook account to immediately delete junk e-mails? Go to options, and click "filters and reporting" under the “delete junk e-mail” section, select immediately to delete junk e-mail right away. Once you’re finished, click save, and you’re done.
*Delete a bunch of mail at once - Go to your Junk and Deleted folders, and clear them out by clicking the “Empty” button in the action bar."


----------



## Retired Peasant (Apr 22, 2013)

That is a totally false notice you got from them - definitely a phishing attempt. Ignore it, don't supply any of the information requested.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...on-email/8bce970d-11c1-4611-a94a-9e23cfb0e4c0


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Seems like blatant phishing to me. No way they would need you to provide that info.


----------



## none (Jan 15, 2013)

pro-tip. If you are somewhere with really bad internet - you can check your gmail directly from the mobile site: m.gmail.com.

Not as pretty but does the job.


----------



## Belguy (May 24, 2010)

I have used AOL for my email since I first learned how to use the computer because I don't know how to change it. Anyway, it works for me and I have never had a problem but wouldn't know if I did.


----------



## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

:untroubled: If it ain't broken, why fix it? yahoo user since a decade or so ago (?) ... and can't stand those periodic upgrades even they're free.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Rusty wow aren't you glad you checked with these forums!

They were about to steal all your account info.

My dad fell for one of these a few weeks ago


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

the-royal-mail said:


> Those who advocate for gmail usually say nothing about how this company scans the contents of your personal email (including that sent to and received from non-gmail users), archives it and uses it to advertise to you, among other things.
> 
> It would be like if the royal mail opened your mail before delivering it to you, reading the contents and trying to figure out what you were talking about and then stuff the envelope with ads, repack it and send it on to you. If they did that people would be in an uproar yet say nothing when gmail does it?
> 
> ...


Yes Google does that. They also have great anti spam, and the sorted inbox is great. Gmail is good if you use multiple devices, email on my desktop doesn't help me if I only have my phone on me.


----------



## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Here is a good read for those that love these Big Brother conspiracy theories:
E-mail is the least of your worries :rolleyes2:


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

The other funny thing is that almost everyone sends unencrypted email.

So anyone along the way can read it.
Unless you are both using client side encryption, someone can read it.


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

HaroldCrump said:


>


Does this author disclose their holdings in Rio Tinto Alcan? :tongue-new:

I switched to Gmail years ago and it was refreshing to get away from all the constant spam in my Hotmail. I haven't seen any spam since.. and I like the new email organization. It syncs well with all the other Google services. I have a new Apple "me" email but it looks basic.. just like their calendar etc


----------

