Choosing A Free Email Provider

By Igor Kalinin, Odessa, Ukraine

June 23, 2000

Our time is remarkable for lots of free services offered on the Internet. Among them free email, or freemail occupies the central position. There is no need to explain once more the advantages of having a permanent web-based email address for life, independent of Internet service providers and your residence.

There are thousands of freemail providers around the Internet, but not all of them are worth your attention. When you are new in the Internet and feel confused, these tips will help.

Fist, there are important points that one should keep in mind while choosing a provider. They include (in the order of importance):

• POP3/SMTP accessibility
• Domain name
• Forwarding feature
• Attachment management
• Definable reply-to address
• Size of the mailbox
• Remoteness of the server from your permanent location
• Filter management

Of course there are a lot of other useful features, but these are crucial. Let us have a more close look at them.

POP3/SMTP accessibility means that you can use your mail client (Outlook Express or The Bat!) to work with your freemail account. Unfortunately, there are not many freemail providers that provide this. (Some say that they do and it does not work in fact, some do for pay, some used to but do not now). But it is important because if you cannot retrieve your mail to your computer, you have to go to the site, log in and read your mail online. This may be very embarrassing if:

• You have too slow a connection
• You have many emails and you need to read all of them and refer to some of them, or just have a look at them, now there, now here, to switch between them
• You pay your ISP per minute, not per month
• You are connected to the Internet through your only telephone line (nobody will be able to call you) and, again, if your telephone subscription is paid per minute, you will have to pay for the time spent reading emails. Whereas once you downloaded all your mail you can read it comfortably and write answers in no hurry.

Also working through a mail client is preferable because:

• Your password may be stolen more easily when you log in online through your browser than when your mail client does it automatically
• When you have written a long and important letter and click "send", if your computer loses connection at this moment, you may lose your letter. (To avoid this, always write emails in the Notepad and copy them into the clipboard).

Unfortunately, as I said, only some freemail providers make it possible to use SMTP/POP3. The reason is - I am sorry to say - spammers. This time we are deprived of a very handy thing because of them - the possibility to use our mail client and the advantages that come along with it. Among those who do provide this free of charge I can mention:

• Yahoo.Com : an excellent service, but as it has existed quite long, all plain login names have been taken and a newcomer has to choose a more flowery or complex name, such as mik23_n65us@yahoo.com. However, such a name has the advantage that it much more spamproof than, say, pet@yahoo.com
  [Editors note: Yahoo.com is only pop/smtp-accessible if you sign up for their direct delivery service]
• Mail.Ru : it has an English version, but you get a name@mail.RU address, which is not especially useful if you live in the USA. And the same problem that with Yahoo
• MailRu.Com : here you get two addresses: name@mailru.com and name@pisem.net, and as it came into being not too long ago, there are some login names to choose of, but it is entirely in Russian
• Beep.Ru : just opened so there a lot of names that have not been taken so far, but it is entirely in Russian too and you get a name@beep.RU address

Domain name should be short and easy to remember, e.g.: MAIL.COM. As the address you get is going to be yours for life, your friends must be able to remember it even years afterward so as to be able to contact you. It is important also when someone puts down your address in a hurry or you are telling somebody your address speaking on the phone. And finally, the shorter it is, the more difficult it is to mistype it. The second important point about the domain is that it should end at *.com, *.net, *.org or the extension provided for your country. If you live in the USA and use a freemail provider from a different country, for example Russia, and it ends at *.ru, it may lead to all sorts of confusion: you may have difficulty explaining your address to somebody; people who know that you do not live in that country may think it is not your address or there is a mistake.

Forwarding feature is also essential because you can you use your old address and give the new one to everybody. It may be convenient, for example, when it is much quicker to connect to your old mail server given by your ISP or you have gotten the new address only recently and a lot of mail continues to come to your old address. People need time to learn your new address. Also, if the freemail provider does not have the POP3/SMTP feature, you may find it more convenient to work with the old address. The option that should be but not always is, is "to save a copy when forwarding". It is important because if your computer breaks down or Love Bug visits you and you lose all you emails, you can recover them. Another thing is that you should be able to specify more than one forwarding address, for example your old address and your cellular phone (so as to know about new messages the moment they arrive).

Attachment manager - If a freemail provider does not support attachments to emails, you may get embarrassed one day even if you think now that you will not need this.

Definable reply-to address is useful when you use your new address as it was described above. It automatically informs people that you have a new address while you continue to use the old one

Mailbox size is usually 2 to 4 MB if you consider old providers, such as Yahoo, but new freemail providers offer much more: 10, 16 and in some cases 20 MB. It is convenient if you get a lot of important emails and wish to keep them for future reference or just in case if you lose them on your computer. Also it is important to have enough space because if you have not read your mail for a long period of time (for example during vacation or illness), your mailbox may get overfull and new messages will not reach you.

Remoteness of the server from your permanent location is crucial if you have a very poor connection. It may take half an hour to download a letter with an attachment of 100 KB in size compared to two or three minutes if your freemail provider is located in your home town.

Filter management - If there is somebody who bothers you (e.g. spammers) or there is a dangerous virus traveling about the Internet you cannot do without filters. Recently when the Love Bug appeared I simply installed a filter: if subject contains "I love you" then delete the message. When I heard about another virus, Killer Resume, I installed a filter too. No trouble at all.

The next step is to choose a login name that is easy to remember and spell. It can be your school nickname, your first name plus your last one (but it is less recommended because everyone will know who you are; however, you may have two addresses, nickname@whatever and realname@whatever).

Now think of a good password. It should be easy FOR YOU to remember and consist of letters as well as numbers. You should not choose your birthday as your password; instead try to think of another date that you remember very well. For example, when you bought your car, or when you met your first love. Then think of a name that is familiar to you, for instance your old friend's name or his pet's name. And make a password like this:

name_ddmmyyyy orr mmddyy_name.

Such a password will be long enough, difficult to guess because it has numbers as well as letters, and easy to remember than, e.g., spusthat210u8 - it tells you nothing. But be careful when you enter the password. Make sure that CapsLock is off and if you are not in an English-speaking country make sure that the layout of keyboard is not national, but English. Look carefully at the keys that you press. Do not be in a hurry and put down the password on a piece of paper BEFORE you enter it. Learn it by heart so that you do not have to look at the piece of paper and keep it in a secure place. Also, when you think of the password, you should also think of a secret question that the server will ask you if you lose your password. Remember, it will be a computer, not a man, so it is important to put down the question as you specified it because even if you answer roughly the same, the computer will not understand you. Unfortunately, most freemail providers do not allow you to make up your own secret question and offer several standard questions, e.g.: mother's maiden name (preferable), pet's name (dangerous. People who once have been to your place may know your pet's name whereas only your relatives may know your mother's maiden name). If you can create the question by yourself, choose something like "How much did I earn in 1995?" (of course if you remember) or "What was my first girlfriend's phone number?" Anyway, it is up to you, but you must think of a question that cannot be answered by your enemies. But it should be easy to answer for you without putting it down. It is not the same as the password. Unlike the password, the answer to the secret question exists by itself, while the password appears when you create it.

Further, try to get several addresses that have the common login name. For example, you@yahoo.com, you@mail.com, you@usa.net. If you one of them is lost (for example, you lost your password and cannot retrieve it or you have not log in for so long that the provider deleted your for lack of activity), your friends will be able to contact you through your other addresses. Also, you will be able to give different addresses to different people if for some reasons you need to, and it will be the same address in fact. At least one of these addresses should be POP3/SMTP-accessible and others should have the forwarding feature so as to direct all incoming mail to that POP3/SMTP address.

Do not forget to keep your accounts active. For that, visit your accounts regularly and send emails from your browser. The thing is that there is a period of time after which your account will be deleted if you do not use it. Some providers allow you 2 or 3 month, others 6 month. And if the server is POP3/SMTP-accessible, working through the mail client (Outlook Express) does not count. So you had better visit your accounts monthly and send check emails to yourself just to keep the accounts active.

And the last tip. When you work not at home, but at a public place, do not forget to log out when you are done. Otherwise when you go someone else may access your account, read emails, send emails from you and in the worst case change your password. There are people who like such jokes. But you need not be afraid of this if you click 'log out' of 'sign off' when you finish work.

Now that you have your address, do not hesitate to keep mailing! It is easy!

Igor Kalinin's personal website may be viewed at: http://www.stirlitz.nm.ru/