The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support Forumswhat free email accounts do you recommend?
My fellow loungers,
I have become a complete and total conspiracy theorist. I want to rebel against the machine of government and internet spying. What email account would you recommend for a nut like me?
I now use gmail but have heard how Google freely shares info with Big Bro. Is there an alternative?
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I mostly use my hotmail for spam mail.. so have to go clean it out once in a while.
Sanity Claws
(21,822 posts)My last hotmail account was hijacked. I tried to close it but couldn't. Microsoft wouldn't help.
I'll keep Yahoo in mind. Thanks.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I have had Yahoo for years with no problems. I don't use it for my personal emails.
Turbineguy
(37,212 posts)gmx.com
juno.com
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)I don't like hotmail because the screen is too small. So I use gmail. But I also have me.com and like that more and more all the time.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)have been beaten into submission and give the gummint spies what they want. Besides, the NSA now has enough computer power to read all our emails without asking.
The good news is that there's too much data for them to deal with, so most of our stuff won't actually be read. The bad news is that if anyone innocently or accidentally uses keywords they're looking for, your mail, and everything else about you, might probably be scrutinized. If they subpoena your activity, they're gonna get what they want no matter what you were told by your ISP or email service.
So, what do I use? Been using Yahoo for years because so far they haven't actively sold my information like Google does-- at least i don't think they have. And the service has been absolutely reliable. I have had problems with IMAP and they charge 25 bucks a year for POP service, but other than that I have no complaints.
Here's a list of 20 email services, all of which seem pretty good, but the article doesn't talk about security.
http://email.about.com/od/freeemailreviews/tp/free_email.htm
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)Yahoo has too much spam, but I still use it.
I like GMail.
If someone's going to spy, they're going to spy. They're probably already doing things we don't even know about.
Not going to worry about that because there's not much I can do about it.
applegrove
(118,022 posts)my brother had just plain stopped working for me one day. I could not send him anything. So I would avoid yahoo for that reason.
EvolveOrConvolve
(6,452 posts)it doesn't matter which service you use.
Emails are routed in plain text through the internet through publicly exposed data routing equipment, and they can be read by anyone with enough expertise to use Google to find out how. The government is less likely to have people with that level of smarts (I work for the government, so I know), including the idiots at the FBI.