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What you should know about Free Email

The Advantages

Vast majority of them are free. Some charge a very nominal amount.

You can access your email from anywhere in the world. Of course there should be the basics:  a PC, a browser and anybody's dial-up account.

It is a life-time email address. Well, not exactly, unless you are dissatisfied with the service provider that you have to change to another one.

It is generally easy to learn and use. There's little learning curve involved. And it pays to learn thoroughly the features because you never know you might need to use one of those features suddenly.

Many services provide excellent email management features such as: create multiple folders for filing email, special filtering rules, multiple POP3 account management, auto-responders and mail-forwarding, supports c.c. and b.c.c., and spell-checking to name a few. Multiple recipients, search  and address book are other features of free email. Shop around.

You can consolidate all your POP3 email accounts under one free email account so that you do not have to log into several ISPs to check your email. Hence this gives you a central management of your email.

No need to install your email account or email client software. Everything is done within the browser. If you can, use the latest versions of the browser software, preferably MS Internet Explorer 4.x and Netscape Communicator 4.x.

The Disadvantages

Be careful about privacy and security. Before applying for a free email account, read their privacy policies. Carefully. Are there any hidden issues? As the recent Hotmail issue has shown (in Sep 99), you may find that it is not always sufficiently secure.

Spam - the sick disease of the Internet. This is one of the popular route to being spammed. Just be prepared to get some now and then. Until someone finds a way to can it.

Mail restrictions like size of mailbox, the size of attachments permitted to name a few. If you regularly send large attachments, then free email might not be a solution unless a special arrangement for large space allocation can be made. Usually for a fee.

Performance and aesthetic issues. Some free email service uses lots of graphics because these services are paid though advertising. It can sometimes clutter the screen resulting in smaller working screen. It can cause irritation. Well, nothing is totally free anyway. However, there are some very low cost web-based email service providers who provide a more full-featured web-based service. The cost is usually USD2.00 to USD4.00 per month.

Accessibility - sometimes the free email service may not be accessible because of occasional system updates, downtime or login time restrictions. Research this area well.

Privacy again - there's no guarantee that the service providers assures you of privacy. It might not always be a good idea to send sensitive email through this service. Because encryption is not the usual feature. If you have to send it anyway, use it sparingly. Remember the Hotmail episode (in Sep 99).

That's all for now.

Copyright of Miku B. Sippy, Hong Kong - Please write to barista@koffeekorner.com  for reprint permission.

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Last modified: March 16, 2000