Email provider

yahoo is fine...but..

David Weaver

..it's free and I'm sure that while it's reliable, they do the same data mining and ad feeding that google does.

gmail works fine

Re: Email provider

William Duffield

I have used Verizon for decades, but that is because they are also my internet and landline (currently optical fiber and previously ADSL and before that analog copper twisted pair) telephone provider, and also my wife's business cell phone provider. I also use Gmail via my Sprint cellular service when I'm on the road (not very often since the beginning of the pandemic.

Re: Email provider

Dave Bair

Try the original, AOL. Free and fairly painless in the butt.

If you're sick if Alphabet soup

Jim Matthews

As a Gmail user, I have some pangs about Google mining my mail for data.

An alternative is available from Mozilla, their "Thunderbird" email service.

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

Re: Email provider Who's your power company?

kneale brownson

I have a couple accounts with TransWorld Network (http://www.twncorp.com/), which teams with power companies to provide email services under the name Coslink. Probably been a customer of TWN for more than thirty years. Costs me something like $12 a month.

Re: Email provider..jumping ship

Tom Dunlap

My EL email only account costs $eight ninety five/month when I pay for the whole year at once. I've had EL for somewhere around twenty years with no complaints. I use it for my most important email connections. For the lesser connections I have some gmail accounts.If We, Bill and I, were to jump ship how do we copy all of our old emails before disconnecting the cord from EL? Hoping that the business connections based on my EL address would be changed is as good a bet as unicorn herding. Has anyone actually jumped ship? How did it go?

Re: Email provider..jumping ship

David Yoho

If We, Bill and I, were to jump ship how do we copy all of our old emails before disconnecting the cord from EL?

This question makes me assume you deal with email by "webmail", where you log onto your provider's email site and do your mail (send, and receive) but it stays on the provider's server not your computer. I think I remember Bill asking a question recently about Thunderbird, which makes me think he downloads incoming mail to his computer.

Perhaps I'm from the old school that started out using an email client (program) to send and receive mail from the provider's server to my computer. I've never understood those that only use webmail but it seems many do it that way.

I have copies of emails that go back many years that I've saved for one reason or another and transferred from old computers to new over that span. I'm always able to keep and access important emails by having them on my computer. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing they were stored on my provider's computer.

If that's the way you handle email, you probably want to download everything before cutting the cord! I also keep people and places in a "Contacts" list in my email program. It's very easy to send them an email announcing a new email address should that be the case.

Re: Email provider..jumping ship

Wiley Horne

Hi Tom,

I jumped ship from Earthlink a year or two ago. It was an EL DSL account and just got too slow. But had been using this account for 15-20 years and had tons of email archived there. Still, had to leave.

When I called EL to cut the cord, they offered to maintain my archived email for a bit under $10/mo. That won’t sound like much of a deal to you, maybe, but for me it was a solution I didn’t have to make a project out of. Took ‘em up on it.

So when I go to mail, there’s the old account. Doesn’t receive new mail, but the legacy mails are there. I’ve only had to go back a couple times to dig through the old mail, but those two times were really important to me, and I was very glad I didn’t just throw it all out.

There is surely a way to download and save your legacy email, should you bail on EL, but just paying EL to keep it for you is one way that is painless (except forbthe $10/mo.).

Wiley

Re: Email provider..jumping ship

John in NM

My long time email is on a webmail interface.... I don't much like it, but that is apparently how the kids are going these days. I fought hard at my last job to get stand alone code written for a telescope motion control computer rather than a web browser thing that the kids wanted to give us.

But back to email Out of curiosity I just connected my usual email (webmail) to my local thunderbird client as I did for my work email several years ago. Thunderbird makes it pretty easy, just put in your username and password and it goes and finds it and downloads all your messages and folder structure. I haven't looked at how to archive it locally, but I'm sure that isn't too hard.

Re: Email provider..jumping ship

Tom Dunlap

Hi Wiley,

I just got my monthly 'bill' notification. It costs me $8.95 to use EL email. I'm giong to talk with my techie friends to see what I would need to do to archive my ancient scripts.

Tom

Why webmail?

Jason Roehl

The preference for webmail is probably two-fold:

1. Extra layer of security. You’re not downloading onto your computer, so it’s harder for code embedded in the email message to potentially infect your computer with some sort of malware.

2. Access. If you’re setup with webmail, you can access your email from any computer that has internet access, instead of from just your home computer.

Jason

Not more secure...

John in NM

In fact, I've used webmail providers before that took security shortcuts - your browser doesn't alert you to this the way local client programs do. To the browser its no different than logging in to a forum like this one.

The security risk is generally not in the message itself, its in the message tricks you into doing - opening an attachment, clicking a link, etc. Last one that got through all the filtration at work wanted you to text a phone number.

As to convenience you are entirely right. They are very convenient when you're traveling without a computer. All you need to do is remember the URL, or what search term gets you there easily, and you have to remember your password (most people don't!).

Good Points

David Yoho

You make two good points and I knew all that. When asked by friends about email, my reply to those who are tech challenged is to use Webmail mostly for the security of not downloading something to their computer that could cause problems.

However, I'm one that wants emails on my computer for later reference. I use a program to preview what's on the server that can then be taught to flag spam that's there for the next time, delete unwanted items from server, and open my email program to download only good mail that remains after "washing".

If I'm away without my computer I can still log into my provider's site to see what's there, respond in needed, but download once back home.

Thunderbird

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I am not sure I follow your needs, but Thunderbird fetched email from Earthlink and puts it on my computer. I can store these emails in any number of kinds of folders, subfolders everything I want to do. I can save all outgoing mail and have various address books accumulated various ways.

No way do I want to rely on my email stored by some other party.I have it set up on Earthlink to delete what they store frequently.

.

Re: Not more secure...

jessecloud

I agree John and its important to tell anyone who might not know this that you email is NEVER EVER PRIVATE, whether the provider tells you that or not.

Even if it is encrypted, most public encryption is so lame it can be broken easily.

Even if the provider doesn't market your info to "partners", the operation details of running and maintaining email systems provide ample opportunities for curious techs to view your mail.

My wife and I have both worked in that environment and have seen this first hand.