Webmail Smackdown: Which Is Best? - Comments Page 2

This is a note to Andrea... She mentioned she has a separate email address for signing up to web sites. I used to do that too.

Try using Abine's MaskMe. It's free. It creates an alias email that looks like 9z67k792@opayq.com for each place you sign up to. Then if you start getting spam you can go to the mask me site and block it. Or you can just delete the email address and receive no emails at all.

Responding to John: I've been an AOL user since the early '90's. Despite an "easy" password, I've never been hacked. I get very little spam, mostly because I'm diligent in labeling the pieces that I do get, and AOL's filters keep out the rest. Only twice in all those years did I get a desired email erroneously routed to the spam box. I've used AOL for both work and personal use and have logged tens of thousands of emails. I like being able to easily control my "saved" destination with appropriate files and subfiles, on my own computer, with the "cloud" as a backup. Is it a perfect service? Of course not. But it is absolutely not the disaster you seem to enjoy portraying with absolute negatives.

I used AOL years ago. Then I switched to Yahoo, which I still consider my "primary" email address. More recently (since 2009), I added Gmail because of all its really cool features. I make great use of filters and such. Love it! So I use both Yahoo and Gmail now, and I don't really want to give up either of them.

As Randi0 so rightly pointed out, Desktop clients and Webmail accounts are NOT mutually exclusive! I have a Hotmail and an outlook email account and a couple of gmail accounts, as well as my 4 ISP email accounts. And when I'm at home I use WLM to access them purely because I prefer to save important emails as html files than to have to print them as .xps files, which is the only way I know how to save them in webmail?

Hello Mr. Rankin and everyone:

My ISP allowed me forward all of my mail to Gmail.
Thus, whenever I receive mail in my ISP's mailbox, it Automatically pops up in my Gmail inbox (and it is NOT saved in my ISP's inbox).

Secondly, I received a couple of reports that Hushmail is actually an agent of the U.S. Government.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hushmail is based in Vancouver, Canada.

I hate yahoo in general used to have geocities till yahoo bought it....I always would paste in my log in and password and yahoo would always say it was wrong...then I would get a new password and lo and behold it would say it wasnt valid...LOST MY GEOCITIES because of that...so yahoo suc.....Ive always had hotmail and it was easy to egt rid of spam..had a gmail acct but never use it not that I had problems with it...Love hotmail but did have problem messages saying 2 of 3 accts were hacked and I didnt have a cellphone at the time...so I always use and love hotmail...have helped some people with their yahoo and they've had problems with site navigation and other problems...so guess you could say Im a yahoo hater

Since Google is known to data mine address books, emails, and documents for their own use, they would be the last service I would use. I know we don't care about privacy these days, but I do care that Google could sell information about people unfortunate enough to send me an email because they are trapped in Google's honeypot. I think I'll look into the service that has some small respect for privacy.

EDITOR'S NOTE: "Google is known to data mine address books, emails, and documents for their own use"??? Can you provide any supporting evidence for this? Or are you just repeating a rumor you heard? Here's some info on Google's privacy policy, how to limit what data they collect, and why I believe they have a strong business incentive to respect that policy (and hence your privacy).

http://askbobrankin.com/is_googles_privacy_policy_evil.html

Understand I'm not cheerleading for Google here.

Gmail will forward all your (non-spam) emails to any other ID you give it.
I prefer the AOL Desktop email handler as it has features found nowhere else.
In my inbox or spambox, I can sort on date, userid, or subject. I can also select those emails containing any search key(s).
For someone geting lots of emails, this ability allow fast selection and/or deletion.

Call it granny mail or anything else, short of writing my own email program, I've found NONE as flexible as AOL's Desktop handler. & it's ads? Easily covered by the mailbox and address book.

I have been using Windows Live Mail, and am happy with it.
Lois

Since I use Windows 7 and lost using Outlook Express, I am still missing it. Outlook Express is in my opinion the easiest and best application you can use. And I am still looking for a replacement. There is a replacement, which you can buy for $99-00 and is made for Windows 7. But it is to expensive to buy.

I've got email addresses with hotmail/outlook, gmail, and yahoo. I've never cared for the feel of gmail, and I use it rarely, because I actually get a lot more spam there than I do in my hotmail account. I used yahoo for awhile, but started getting a lot of posts from friends whose email accounts had been harvested for spam. Bunches of them. I've tried recently to call Yahoo for some problems with my email, but I was put on hold waiting for a representative for 15 minutes (yes, I was actually watching the clock), no one ever came on the line, and then the call just dropped. This happened twice. As for hotmail: I hated it when they converted hotmail to the new outlook, but I'm slowly making peace with it. And last of all, there used to be a free web based email a few years ago called bigstring that would allow you to even delete one of your previous messages from a recipient's mailbox. I don't think they are still operating, but I would love to find a service that can tell me when a message is read. Does anyone know of a good web based email with this ability?

Only anyone who has absolutely no concern for their privacy whatsoever would even consider using gmail. They are notorious for spying. To grant them access to my private e-mails would be ludicrous. I'll stick with what has always been the best, MSN mail.

EDITOR'S NOTE: So you have a preference as to which corporate behemoth gets access to your data? There are plenty of (silly) stories about how Gmail supposedly "reads your email", etc. Some of them are stories deliberately spread by the Microsoft PR department. Google's privacy policy is pretty clear on this issue. You can choose not to believe it, but then why would you trust Microsoft, Apple or any other web services provider any more?

Hi Bob,

We have been using AOL for email since we first got a computer back in the days of Windows 98. We now have Windows 7 in our Asus desktop we bought in 2011, and are still using AOL as our main browser and email. We like AOL for email as it is intuitive to use, and find that works fine for us.

Like a couple of others, I'm extremely ancient and still use the venerable desktop app: Thunderbird. When I want to check my email, I don't use my cell phone or Ipod or anything else, I use my desktop computer, and in the 10 years I've been using Thunderbird, it's never given me a bit of trouble. I've stored at least several Gigabytes of emails, can sort and delete them easily, and the whole thing backs up very nicely using Mozbackup, a third party freeware. Besides which, I don't need the hassle of changing my email address. Love it.

My Yahoo mail has been seriously slow for the past year, so slow that I refer everyone to my hotmail acct. Also my computer.After reading Bob's post re; changing to Yahoo.com I decided to delete it. Voila! The bonus is my computer this morning stunned me at the speed with which it booted up and when I open I.E. it's just there. Oh, I know this cannot have anything to with my previously mentioned actions, however it leaves me curious as to what has taken place. And yep I have hotmail, and xp. No hope for me, eh?. Best regards. john.

I have used Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail for very limited purposes, especially if I didn't want particular entities or groups from knowing my "real" (ISP-provided) e-mail address. I still prefer to receive my "real" e-mail in Outlook on my desktop computer. I feel like I have a lot more control over what goes where and make extensive use of the rules feature. I make extensive use of the calendar as well. Also the interface doesn't change unexpectedly--I would have to upgrade to a newer version for that to happen, and obviously I would know it was going to occur!

Even technically-oriented people do not like sudden changes foisted on them, and less technically gifted people are often at sea.
Outlook.com may be an improvement as regards spam, but it is almost universally disliked by everyone I know that is/was a regular hotmail user. The new interface made it difficult for some of my older relatives to figure out how to do simple things like send or forward e-mail!

If you run into problems free on-line e-mail accounts don't give a lot of personalized help--you get what you pay for!

I was gonna ask you to speak about GMX & their 50mb attachment feature, but didn't know about Outlook's 300mb option.
thank you,

I have a Hotmail Address as a paid account and also livemail with my hotmail address. I also have a paid Yahoo account grandfathered. I also have gmail, which is neccessary if you have a smart phone and want to transfer all your google info to it. I also use AOL and my ISP email. All are forwarded to my Hotmail and livemail account.

I do not use hotmail or livemail on my cell phone,I get at least 50 or so emails per day, but do on my tablets.does anyone remember when gmail first came out you needed an invitation from a user to sign up for gmail?

This Granny has been using AOL since 1992, when I paid for it. I have Yahoo, Comcast and Gmail addresses, but I like AOL the best. It reflects my hobby, and is easy to remember, too.

GMail does allow to send larger email attachments through Google Drive. Thanks for all the great informative articles.
~ Hira