New e-mail account

[pzu]

Would appreciate comments recommendations for a suitable e-mail account

In the past I have been with various ISP's - Virgin, AOL, Orange and currently Plus Net and consequently have had/used various e-mail accounts

Currently despite being with Plus Net I'm still using Orange and still have active accounts with Virgin and Hotmail

My Orange account is a pain - Virgin are threatening to shut me down as I'm a 'long gone' customer and I distrust Hotmail

Am reluctant to use the Plus Net account as I feel I may be switching ISP's again

Can anyone recommend a FREE stand alone e-mail account that has good security and minimises SPAM

Thanks in Advance

PZU - Out of Africa (Retired)

[Milo Minderbinder]

The free e-mail system with the best spam filters is clearly Yahoo!

They're also far less intrusive than either Hotmail or Google in terms of automatically enrolling you into other junk software / profiles etc
And more importantly - its easier to manage your profile and keep it private than it is with the others

AOL (I hate to say this) is a close second - its Spam filters are nearly as good, and the profile management is OK

Both enable you to use IMAP if you want - the AOL is easier to set up in that respect

[unclenelli]

Use bareback webmail using own filtering
Use any free webmail via MS Outlook/Outlook Express and use their Junkmail Filters
Buy Firetrust Mailwasher Pro (http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro) which will filter any spam (with the option to boumce as per a non-existant address for any unknown sender)
(free Lite-version available)

[Milo Minderbinder]

"FREE stand alone e-mail account that has good security"

Something I should have pointed out in my first reply

"good security" and "e-mail" is almost an oxymoron.
"good security" and "free e-mail" IS an oxymoron

Web mail accounts can, and do, get hacked. If you want security, you need end-to-end encryption, but thats another story (which others here are better able to advise on than me)

[zarniwoop]

I've been using Yahoo for a couple of years now without complaint, as Milo said they don't bug you to sign up to anything, in fact I don't remember getting any messages from them.

The junk/spam filter isn't perfect and has put a couple of legitimate messages in the spam folder, but that's pretty much par for the course from what I've read.

[Old and Horrified]

Could I be a little cheeky and ask a related question?

I currently have a Freeserve email account (now supplied by Orange) with Orange supplying my broadband, but they are quite expensive and BT appear to be offering much better deals. If I move over to BT, will my freeserve email address disappear? I quite expect to have to migrate eventually to Yahoo or similar, but I would rather not try and do it overnight.

Many thanks,

[OFSO]

If you are using an android smartphone, without doubt, use Googlemail. I have several different accounts (including Yahoo!) and by far the best integrated is google, nothing comes near it for a slick operation on WIN, tablet and phone.

[Milo Minderbinder]

"will my freeserve email address disappear"

Probably
they used to state they would be killed off after a certain period following the end of contract. 120 days comes to mind, but thats just a vague memory.

In practice some accounts seem to be ceased quickly, others carry on, while others continue to receive mail but not send. Part of this variance may be due to the terms on which you left - those who moved at contract end seem to have a better result than those who moved due to contract problems, breaking the contract early
Its also worth remembering that Orange/Freeserve are a bit funny about allowing e-mail to be sent from "other" networks - they block some of the commoner ports to stop spam, you have to work around that

Best to start making moves to a different e-mail account some time before you make the ISP switch

As to the costs of Orange vs BT - Orange did go a long way down the route of unbundling exchanges to reduce costs, but gave up around two years ago and sold their backbone network to BT. All they offer now are retail versions of BTOpenreach services, so theres unlikely to be any price advantage in using Orange. They realised they were simply too small a player in the UK

[Shack37]

I currently have a Freeserve email account (now supplied by
Orange) with Orange supplying my broadband, but they are quite expensive and BT
appear to be offering much better deals. If I move over to BT, will my freeserve
email address disappear? I quite expect to have to migrate eventually to Yahoo
or similar, but I would rather not try and do it overnight.

I have had a fsmail account (also Orange) for years, during which time I have changed ISP several times here in Spain. Doesn't matter which ISP you're with, just go into orange.co.uk and log in to your email. If you don't use it for (I think) 90 days then it will be cancelled by default. As long as you continue to use it, your freeserve account will remain active.

[Ancient Observer]

Another vote for Yahoo. Their e-mail spam filtering is not perfect, but is very good for me. I've not yet missed an important e-mail.
Anyway, if it is important, I have a phone that they can call me on.....

[pzu]

Could be Yahoo for me - will have to let the honoured few I've switched again!!!

PZU - Out of Africa (Retired)

[EEngr]

I bought my own domain name years ago. I have a DNS service/redirector that allows me to point e-mail to any hosting service I want.

I've seen hosting services come and go. And I've seen policy changes at bigger outfits that switch from protecting their customers to selling their souls to the highest bidder. No problem for me. I just get a new host, reconfigure the redirection and never have to broadcast a change of address to my friends and business associates.:8

[Hobo]

I've used three Hotmail accounts for over 10 years and have had no problems at all. Why use MS Windows and then not use their email system?

[obgraham]

Outlook Express fans (I wuz one once):
What are you using on a new computer, seeing's how OE is no longer existant?

[obgraham]

Back to the asked question: GMail works well for email, readily accessible anywhere and on any device. Spam filter there is better than Yahoo in my opinion.
BUT yes, Google has become overbearing and you have to be very careful to avoid downloading crap you don't want.

[mike-wsm]

Hotmail is absolutely brilliant. All the folders and sub-folders you could want, so it is easy to file emails by sender or to archive those account setups. The spam blocking is excellent, you benefit from other users reporting spam. You also can set individual blocked addresses. I've had lots of other email accounts, most of them come free with websites or isps, and nothing has ever approached the features of hotmail. Hotmail is robust, solid, reliable.

[Milo Minderbinder]

mike-wsm
Hotmail has one overbearing problem: no IMAP, making it a problem to synch properly on multiple devices

[Saab Dastard]

Outlook Express fans (I wuz one once):
What are you using on a new computer, seeing's how OE is no longer existant?

I decided to move to the full Outlook client, as two PCs at home have Office 2010 Professional (student price £38 - one of the benefits of offspring), which includes Outlook.

The other 2 desktop PCs are only used with webmail interfaces, so doesn't matter.

SD

[mike-wsm]

Milo,
Sorry, don't understand. There is only one of me and I log in on one terminal at a time, tablet via app or public access windows xp or 7, going in via whatever browser, google, chrome, ff, ie.
Am I missing something?

[Milo Minderbinder]

you hit the problem right there without realising it

You're using webmail through a browser, which isn't actually always a good idea - especially on a tablet or phone, where the internet connection can be intermittent
Far better to have a system whereby the mail is actually downloaded to each device and synchronised - and that means IMAP. Which Hotmail can't do.
AOL, Google, Yahoo can all do IMAP

On a Windows PC you can get an rough approximation to IMAP by using Windows Live Mail - but that has a number of idiosyncracies which count against it, especially in the way it handles photo attachments. And you can't do it with any other hardware

If all you do is browse in web cafes, fine. But for real work it fails

[mike-wsm]

Thanks Milo, all is clear now. :ok:

[ExSp33db1rd]

Outlook Express fans (I wuz one once):
What are you using on a new computer, seeing's how OE is no longer existant?

Yes, I too am/was an Outlook Express fan, but it morphed into Windows Mail on my Vista Laptop, and Windows Live Mail on a recent Netbook Win 7 purchase, but both seem the same to me, only a name change - but as one suffering from EGBF ( Electronic Gadget Brain Failure ) I must be missing some finer points that I will never use ( like many years ago buying an expensive SLR camera lens that had an f1.4 aperture - then taking nothing but shots on the beach, where one had to stop it down to f16 anyway !! - if you see what I mean ? )

Why do "they" have to keep CHANGING things !!

The advantage of O.E. or Win.Mail for me, is that when travelling I can crouch outside a coffee shop offering free WiFi in exchange for buying a coffee, download e-mail from my home ISP via their webmail service, transfer what I need to keep to Win.Mail, then take the computer back to our apartment - that is not wired for either telephone nor broadband - and we can read, and reply to, our e-mails over a free cup of coffee at our leisure, offline, later in the day.

Works for me.

[Ancient Observer]

obg

I much preferred OE.

Didn't like the Vista and 7 alternates so moved to full Outlook.

In my case, it is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it does what I want. (I have modest requirements).

[bnt]

re Hotmail - I don't think you can get a Hotmail address any more, but Microsoft are rolling out new domains: live.<country> and (recently) outlook.com. For example, I got a live.ie address because I'm in Ireland.

However, as an email provider, Microsoft has one major flaw: they don't like IMAP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP) and don't offer it on free accounts. They prefer that you use their MAPI (Exchange) protocol, which is fine if you use Outlook on a Windows PC, since they have a "Hotmail Connector" for that. For someone like me, using Thunderbird on a Linux system, it's either the old POP protocol (which just downloads mail) or the webmail page.

[OFSO]

Why do "they" have to keep CHANGING things !!

So "they" can tell you that "new" = "better" and you should pay to get the "better".

I've been reasonably happy with every version of WIN over the past 12 years (except Vista), only asking that speed and stability were improved. But all we seem to get are bells and whistles hung onto existing software.....which are then marketed as "improvements".

Of course it's not just WIN....my HTC phone running Andy Pandy is perfectly useable as is but keeps trying to download "updates" (or did before I disabled them).

Grrrrrrgh !

[seacue]

There'd be a lot of empty buildings chez Microsoft if they didn't bring out new = better every few years to entice purchase of newer software.

[piton]

I have no complaints about gmail - I can receive both my yahoo & upc (local web based provider) mail in my gmail inbox as well as mail from company intranet - was easy to set the auto-fwds up and now can access all this on laptop, phone or ipad. Good spam filter (just once in a while a non-spam email categorised as spam but you have 30 days to check yr spam inbox & save it). would recommend to anyone. Plus of course, it's free.

[lefthanddownabit]

My experience of Gmail is good as well, their spam filter is very accurate and learns quickly. IMAP works a treat, any system that doesn't support it is not worth using unless you have no choice.

Buy Firetrust Mailwasher Pro (http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro) which will filter any spam (with the option to boumce as per a non-existant address for any unknown sender)
(free Lite-version available)

Bouncing back spam as if the address is non-existant sounds like a great idea but in my experience it seems to generate more spam rather than stop it. Anyway spammers simply don't care whether the addresses they send to are genuine or not. They won't waste any time on checking for bounced back emails and deleting those addresses from their lists.