Email Providers

[The Big Peat]

I'm thinking of opening a new email account or two so I can sort my email as it seems easier to have accounts for email from people I want to hear from, people I might want to hear from, and services I don't want to hear from but had to give them an email address than to sort it all out in one account. Was idly curious as to whether anyone had suggestions for good services, particularly in the privacy from service provider stakes - or whether they knew any of the big ones are particularly bad for it. Not sure I've got a lot to hide but it's the principle of it damnit.

 

[Overread]

You know you could setup folders within one email account and then a redirect so that each email from specific sources goes into a specific folder. That can be one way you can operate fewer emails whilst still getting all the mail coming in without having things like advertising overwhelm your main inbox.

This can make things simpler for you and others; eg those "contacts I might want to hear from" and "contacts I really need to hear from" could include people and groups that shift in importance over time. Those shifts might not have anything to do with them and could be all down to you so you can't go changing your email that you're linked to them with all the time. It's messy and impractical. Whilst if you have the stuff getting auto sorted into folders you can just change the target destination folder.

 

[The Big Peat]

You know you could setup folders within one email account and then a redirect so that each email from specific sources goes into a specific folder. That can be one way you can operate fewer emails whilst still getting all the mail coming in without having things like advertising overwhelm your main inbox.

This can make things simpler for you and others; eg those "contacts I might want to hear from" and "contacts I really need to hear from" could include people and groups that shift in importance over time. Those shifts might not have anything to do with them and could be all down to you so you can't go changing your email that you're linked to them with all the time. It's messy and impractical. Whilst if you have the stuff getting auto sorted into folders you can just change the target destination folder.

If I thought that'd be easier over the long run I wouldn't be asking about this.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Gmail is excellent for filtering out spam. Very few false positives, too.

You can also have more than one Gmail account - for example, a personal one and one for business.

 

[Astro Pen]

Despite privacy settings in Gmail when I send my manuscripts to people within a short time specifics from the MS appear in my youtube suggestions.
2 examples from one manuscript
I was puzzled at getting many suggestions for Fischer-Spasski chess games. I have no interest in chess but I realised that I did have a character called Fischer
I also got vids for a specific classic car, not surprisingly the heroine of the story drives one she inherited from her mother.
The same applied to a MS I read through and returned to a friend with flight simulators and plane crashes. You tube suggestions pivoted to them for 2 weeks though I have zero interest in aviation and had not searched them
So while I use gmail for general, I now use a private Swiss email account created by some CERN guys for anything I don't want google AI to read before my editor.
I recommend you do the same. The Swiss guys Protonmail system is a little clunky but it is encrypted and private

 

[Elckerlyc]

When something comes free, like Gmail, you can be sure you'll pay for it with some different coin.

Not sure I've got a lot to hide but it's the principle of it damnit.

The question is not whether you have something to hide, but the certainty that you have something to protect: your privacy and personal data and that of the people you are emailing with.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Funnily enough Peat, I've been thinking about this today. The Uni press who publish my shorts have asked me to set myself up an author's website so I was looking at the email side of things, too. I've not had much time to look into the options but I'll let you know what happens. I know that within a consumer domain you can have up to 5 email addresses (because of family) but I would expect they're not ideal - certainly you may have to download them all from the server which kind of defeats the object.

I've done the Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo freebies for the exact thing you said (I use the gmail one for 'proper' email).

pH