http://www.ComputerBob.com/guides/guide_free_email.php .
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by ComputerBob
September 15, 1999
Last Updated December 18, 2002
If you don't have your own email address, or if you would like an additional email address, you can sign up for a free permanent Web-based email account at many different Web sites, including MyRealBox and MyWay and VerizonMail and CMPnet and Mail.com and UltimateEmail.com and Netaddress and Netscape and Yahoo! -- ComputerBob does not recommend Microsoft's Hotmail, because it has repeatedly had security holes that allowed others to access private email accounts and private email messages.
MyWay is different from most other free email providers in one important way. According to their Web site, "My Way does not present its users with pop-ups, banners or any other non-text advertising. Nor does My Way send email to its users. If you see or receive one of these items, it is coming from an outside source, either as a result of something you have previously downloaded or as an 'exit' pop-up from the site you just visited. It is not coming from My Way."
Shoutmail is different from most other free email providers because, along with normal email access over the Web, Shoutmail can also read your text email messages to you over the telephone, using a toll-free (in some parts of the U.S.) phone number. It also lets you send and receive voice mail messages. (Thanks, Gini Spurr!)
UPDATE (June 1, 2002): In the past several months, many formerly free Web-based email providers have either gone out of business or have begun charging for all but their most basic services. So, if a free Web-based email provider's email account is the only email that you have, you may want to get two or more email free email accounts from different providers, to ensure that you'll still have an email account if one of your providers goes out of business or changes its policies in the future. Both Free Email Address Directory and Free Email Providers Guide have the latest information about current free email providers.
Why would you want to get a free Web-based email account? Because, with a free Web-based email account, you will be able to access your free email account to send and receive email messages from any computer in the world that has Internet access, whether or not you are a registered student, whether or not you move to a different part of the country or the world, and whether or not you change Internet Service Providers. The reason the email accounts are free is because they show you advertisements onscreen along with your email, and they add advertisements to each email message that you send through their service. To sign up for a free email account, use any of the computers in ComputerBob's classrooms, in any of the Open Computer Labs, or use your Internet-connected PC at home.
If you sign up for a free email account at any of the free Web-based email sites, you can choose to use the same username that you're planning to use on ComputerBob's Forums, or you can make up a different username. Keep in mind, however, that each of the free email providers has millions of users, so many common usernames have already been taken by someone else. If your chosen email username is already taken, keep trying different usernames until you choose a one that is unique, or go to a different free email provider's Web site and see if your preferred username is available there.
Once you register for a free email account, be sure to WRITE DOWN YOUR EMAIL USERNAME (for example, twinkletoes) and your new email address (for example, twinkletoes @ mail.com) so that you can tell it to your friends and classmates, and they'll be able to send you email messages. Also, make sure you write down the URL (Web address) of your free email provider (for example www.mail.com) so you'll know where to go on the Internet to send, receive, and check for new email messages you receive, using your new username and password. And, of course, be sure to remember your password, or you won't be able to use your email acccount! Don't forget -- usernames and passwords are case-sensitive, so the password is "lawnmower427" and "LawnMower427" are two completely different passwords.
Any time you want to access your Web-based email account, just go to your provider's Web site (for example www.mail.com) and enter your username (for example, twinkletoes) and your password into the boxes provided for them onscreen. Entering your username and password correctly proves to your email provider that you are who you say you are. After you've entered your username and password, click on the button below them that sends them to your provider. After a few seconds, the screen should display a welcome message and tell you if you have any new email messages in your Inbox.
NOTE: Don't tell your friends the URL of your free email provider's Web site -- they won't need that at all. All your friends need to know is your email address so that they can send email messages to you. Your friends will NOT go to your free email provider to pick up the messages you send to them -- your email messages to your friends will arrive at their normal email address, where they will read it just like every other email message they receive. YOU are the only one who needs to remember the URL of your free Web-based email provider, because that is where YOU will go to send email messages to your friends, and to read the email messages that your friends send to you.
It's nice that you can access your free Web-based email account from any Internet-connected computer in the world. But, what if you have several Web-based email accounts, and you want to check each of them every few minutes from your computer at home? In that situation, it would be inconvenient to have to log-in to each of your email accounts every few minutes, just to check for new messages. Well, you won't have to do that if you download and install ePrompter software on your computer. According to its creators, "ePrompter now allows you to compose, forward and reply to the messages that have been retrieved for you. ePrompter automatically checks up to sixteen password protected email accounts for AOL, AltaVista, Earthlink, Email.com, Go.com, Hotmail, Juno, Lycos, Mail.com, Mindspring, MSN, Netscape, OneBox, POP3, Rediffmail, U.S.A, Yahoo and hundreds of other email domains - all at the same time. ePrompter features a unique rotating tray icon, and a choice of four unique screensavers that let you know at a glance the number of new messages in each account, which you can easily read and/or delete online or offline with the click of an icon. It's extremely easy to set up and use." There's even an ePrompter Support Forum, where you can ask questions and learn more about its features. NOTE: In 2002, ePrompter's developer announced that ePrompter will become either shareware or paid subsciption software around the end of the year.
Be sure to check your free email provider's policies from time to time. Free email providers have been known to change their security policies without notifying their users. Bob Leifeld brought the following example to my attention:
If you signed up for Hotmail - or anything else that uses Passport - more than a couple of months ago, you may be in for a big surprise. It seems that Microsoft changed the rules while you weren't looking. Unilaterally, Microsoft may have granted itself permission to pass along your personal information to other companies that use Passport on their Web sites. The personal information includes your email address, your birthday, your country and zip code, your gender and occupation.
Has Microsoft taken liberties with your data? There's an easy way to check. Go into Hotmail. Click Options (to the right of the tab that says "Address Book"). Click Personal Profile (in the upper left corner). Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see whether the boxes marked "Share my e-mail address" and "Share my other registration information" have been checked.
Those boxes didn't exist when I signed up for Hotmail, and chances are pretty good they didn't exist when you signed up for it, either. I certainly never gave Microsoft permission to hand out my email address - or my birthday, gender or occupation. I'd rather be dipped in oil. Yet both of those boxes on my personal profile were checked. I bet they're checked on your personal profile, too.
Details are still murky, but it looks like Microsoft added those two check boxes a couple of months ago, and did itself a big favor by checking both of them for all of the Passport holders at the time.
Along with making sure that your email provider isn't violating your privacy, it's also important to make sure that you don't violate your own privacy. If you send, receive, and/or check for new email messages from any public computer (such as those at the college), there are two things you should do to make sure that no one else can get into your email account:
