I totally agree with JDK . I have like 20 E Mail accounts . Several for "giving out" to sites that make you sign up , a few for "other" purposes
, 3 or 4 for personal use , and several more just to test different E Mail providers . Never and I mean
NEVER give them real info about yourself such as birthdate , address , or your real name . There is such a thing as junk *snail mail* don't forget . Make shit up and write it down in case someday you need it to retrieve a , or get a new , password if you forget it or get hacked . By the way , yes Hotmail blows (surprise , they are owned by Microshaft™) for spam
but it has an ingenious feature that lets you set it so nothing but mail from people on your friends list makes it to your inbox . Everything else is sent to your junk mail folder . If you make a habit of adding all new contacts as you send to them (jobs , new friends etc.) it works perfectly .
I am testing a new provider called Fastmail
http://www.fastmail.fm and I really like what I see so far . I am , like everyone else (should be) counting the days until Google's GMail™ comes out with its 1 gig of storage and built in search engine
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/screen1.html There has been much hoopla regarding Google's plans to search your E Mail for content and place stable ads to the right of your E Mail window pertaining to what you mentioned in your mail
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/screen2.html If you wrote " Yo Bob , can't wait to hit the lake next weekend , I will bring the beer , smoke , and fishing gear , and I hope your boat doesn't suck ass " you might get ads that are relating to boats , fishing tackle , Budweiser , and bongs
Remember these will
not be banner ads or animated pop-ups , they will be exactly what you see to the right of your screen called "sponsored links" when you use Google Search . Also , an automated BOT will be doing all the searching and no actual human will ever see your mail content . All of the bitching and moaning and Human Rights bullshit people have been bringing up are just that ; bullshit . Google has been doing exactly the same thing for years when you use their search engine . All of this has actually helped all of us already . Yahoo recently expanded their E Mail storage limit considerably and Hotmail and others will follow suit very soon , all in the fear that GMail will steal all of their business away (which I believe will happen regardless)
Hotmail and Yahoo are also going to implement a new spam blocking technique that is so clever I can't believe nobody thought of it before , a simple "E Mails per day" limit that the user can set . Lets say you usually get 1-3 E Mails a day max . Set the gate to block anything over 5 and you're virtually spam-free .
We all have Google to thank for this , they are forcing every provider to re-think their product and improve it to a point where they won't be slaughtered when GMail surfaces .
An example of how powerful and forward thinking Google is : Several months ago Microshaft™ offered to buy them for 30 billion (yes
billion) dollars . To my utter happiness and joy , Google told them to fuck off and die
F~