alternative email providers?

[metaphortunate]

Nice timing, since my last post. What email providers do people use other than Gmail? I think it's about time to take some of my accounts off of Gmail.

Comments

[kore]

Google can take information you provide on your Google Profile, including your name and photo, and use it on all your other Google products like Gmail -- and can replace past names you used, so you're the same on all sites.

....Hoo boy.

[submarine_bells]

They've been doing that for a while; it's only now they're actually admitting that they're doing so and making it "official".

As I said in reply to another post elsenet about Google's recently-slightly-updated policy on pseudonym use on G+:

It was the nymwars that started the souring of my feelings toward Google. But what really cemented it, and what I don't think they're likely to change, is their attitudehostility toward privacy: stuff like their auto-linking of accounts on different services that they deemed to be owned by the same person, without any input or option by the user (that happened to me and I was unable to reverse it without giving them even more personal private data, which I declined to do); their emphasis on users having ONE AND ONLY ONE ACCOUNT for all their services, all linked up; the impossibility of participating in G+ without having every comment one makes in discussions findable in a google search regardless of the privacy settings one chooses for one's own G+ account (yep, I tested that one too), etc etc. It doesn't really matter if I make a Google account under [wallet name redacted] or as Gertrude Brussel-Sprout - Google will still insist on and enforce me having all my accounts and data under one profile, one unified persona. They've been being downright aggressive about that; and this, more than the nymwars thing, is why I will have no truck with their datamining any more, and am now even using their search engine via an anonymiser (which also has the pleasant side-effect of opting me out of their non-optional adjusting of search results according to geographical location, which can often be beyond annoying).

[serene]

I use my own domain hosting, and can give you a free, unlimited @serenepages.org or @momfoodproject.com email address, either POP or IMAP, if you want.

[brooksmoses]

What I do is take a domain name that I own, and bounce email from there to the email server that my ISP provides.

The advantage of that is that I completely control the email address, and don't have to worry about changing it if I change providers. The disadvantage is that that control only exists as long as I own the domain name, and if for some reason I forget to renew it, it's trivial for someone else to pick it up and start getting all of my email -- including the "please validate that you're who you say you are" emails to change other account passwords.

[dancingsinging]

OMG, how is that not being actively evil!

I vacillate between being about to remove myself from everything on the web and throwing my hands up and just uploading my life to the dataminers. (Once they have everything, then I don't have to fight it anymore, right?)

I srsly can't decide how much time/effort to dedicate to keeping some modicum of privacy on the internet.

I've been using POBOX.COM since 2002

[jesse_the_k]

I paid $25 for 5 years' service back then, before Hotmail/Gmail domination. It's now $20 - $50/year, with the higher price including 10g mailstore and five addresses. They offer POP and IMAP; I IMAP to both my laptop and my iPod touch.

They have actual live people who answer the phone when you're in another state trying to get through a public library's firewall.

Their webmail client isn't as nifty as Gmails', but no ads and promise not to data-mine.

[firecat]

I route my personal mail through my domain host (pair.com) and then send it to panix.com (see snippy's post).

[piglet]

I have 3 paid providers -- I have my own domain, I have a mac.com account, and I have a Panix account. The Panix account I've had the longest and will never give up.

Er, I am also the tech support director there (long-time customer, recent staffer). So. Hi.