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Old 4 Aug 2017, 11:34 PM   #31
rscaramelo
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I've tried many of the mentioned services and am never satisfied. I may settle on POBox which checks my 3 boxes - use my own domain, can do an alias and the webmail looks pleasant. Any other suggestions? I don't mind paying. Oh and I need to be able to migrate my old emails.
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Old 5 Aug 2017, 12:39 AM   #32
Dutchie007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
I wouldn't worry about expressing political views in emails in any Western country. For most of us the far bigger and far more realistic worry is being hacked, phished, etc.
Dont be too sure about that.

I lived long enough in Germany so I can tell you that (normal) email traffic is being monitoired...as well as postings on Facebook or other Social media especialy Twitter. German autorities have special police units (!) who are doing this all day long...and prosecute people if things being posted which do NOT stroke with the views of the German government. There are many examples allready of people who get fines (and their accounts blocked) just for posting critical things about fe the refugees.(just to name a topic.

You are warned..!! Thats why i do NOT use any German based email service. Most of them give data away to authorities even without a Judge asking to do this..!(no joke).
If you master the German language you can find enough examples on the internet via any search engine.

Dutchie.
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Old 5 Aug 2017, 09:59 PM   #33
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
We (all of us) always tend to fear the wrong things
Amen! And I'd say these words of wisdow apply to life in general, not only to using email/internet.
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Old 5 Aug 2017, 10:11 PM   #34
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutchie007 View Post
Dont be too sure about that.

I lived long enough in Germany so I can tell you that (normal) email traffic is being monitoired...as well as postings on Facebook or other Social media especialy Twitter. German autorities have special police units (!) who are doing this all day long...and prosecute people if things being posted which do NOT stroke with the views of the German government. There are many examples allready of people who get fines (and their accounts blocked) just for posting critical things about fe the refugees.(just to name a topic.

You are warned..!! Thats why i do NOT use any German based email service. Most of them give data away to authorities even without a Judge asking to do this..!(no joke).
If you master the German language you can find enough examples on the internet via any search engine.

Dutchie.
I speak German fluently, lived in Germany for a year, and have always experienced Germany as a haven of tolerance and diversity. I'm not saying sources claiming monitoring of email traffic are per definition making things up, I will say I would not mistrust German internet providers by any means.

If simply criticising the government is a reason to be "followed", that would be worrying. If spreading calls for violence or racist outings (for example as a reaction to the refugees policies) is a reason to be fined, then a lot of countries would be in the same situation. Freedom of speech is usually ending where spreading hatred begins.

Also, German products generally tend to be of very high quality (without saying every single German email provider is good per definition...)
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Old 5 Aug 2017, 11:13 PM   #35
TenFour
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I've been rethinking the "long-term" thing and wondering if maybe "free" email providers, provided you choose the right one, might be longer lasting than many/most of the paid ones. For example, I can't imagine Gmail disappearing overnight. Another factor is when you pay a provider you obviously have to keep paying or else they will cut you off, whereas Gmail gives you at least 9 months of no activity before they shut down your account. You only need to arrange some POP or IMAP activity to keep it open indefinitely. It doesn't take much activity or effort to keep free email accounts open. I imagine most of us have various odd free accounts we've set up over the years that just keep working away with minimal use. Domain email is often touted on here (by me too) as a way of having control over your own email address for the long-term, but again you have to keep paying or your domain can go away. Size matters a lot too. Go for a giant provider if you want longevity. Some smaller shops only have a handful of employees, and sometimes only one or two. If a key person leaves your email service might end overnight. The true giants have multiple scattered data centers, huge teams of security people, and all sorts of redundancy. Something like a DoS attack can take down even medium-sized and larger companies, while one of the giants can usually keep chugging along. We saw what happened to Fastmail a few years back. Having worked in cs a lot I know that even with large companies the fallback communication tool is often a personal Gmail address when everything else is down, and I see that even executives at these companies often use a free email service for important communications.
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Old 3 Sep 2017, 08:20 AM   #36
rmns2bseen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zach View Post
People post political views in emails? That's news to me! I thought email was being used less and less for friendly conversation, with Facebook & WhatsApp taking over. I prefer emails over any other method of communication (I like snail mail too) but pretty much everyone I know thinks I'm strange for not having moved onto more modern social media platforms.
Well I do wonder if email is becoming more and more passé. I used to frequent this forum a lot and remember all the debates about Squirrelmail vs IMP vs RoundCube vs whatever, Thunderbird vs Outlook Express vs Mulberry vs The Bat, and oooh I just HAVE to have my own domain . This forum crossed my mind though and had to check out what was happening here, and the paucity of topics would seem to indicate that indeed email ain't what it used to be. I just use Gmail and an old msn.com.address. Those two are still here after all these years, and I haven't felt that my privacy has been any more compromised by using those as opposed to some smaller service in Germany or Russia or wherever.
(Edit) It's good to see FastMail is still at it though

Last edited by rmns2bseen : 3 Sep 2017 at 08:37 AM.
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Old 4 Sep 2017, 04:25 AM   #37
Dutchie007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rmns2bseen View Post
Well I do wonder if email is becoming more and more passé. I used to frequent this forum a lot and remember all the debates about Squirrelmail vs IMP vs RoundCube vs whatever, Thunderbird vs Outlook Express vs Mulberry vs The Bat, and oooh I just HAVE to have my own domain . This forum crossed my mind though and had to check out what was happening here, and the paucity of topics would seem to indicate that indeed email ain't what it used to be. I just use Gmail and an old msn.com.address. Those two are still here after all these years, and I haven't felt that my privacy has been any more compromised by using those as opposed to some smaller service in Germany or Russia or wherever.
(Edit) It's good to see FastMail is still at it though
It is. I see more and more people NOT using email. Even in companies they use more and more whatsapp,Skype or Viber. (replace that last with LINE or Wechat in Asia).
Most people,especialy younger ones do NOT use email anymore. They still have an account...because they have an iphone or an Android cellphone..but hardly use their email account. These are my findings.

If you want to use a larger (free) email service which is NOT Google/Microsoft or Yahoo/AOL...think mail.ru/Yandex or Zoho.

D
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Old 6 Sep 2017, 08:57 AM   #38
TenFour
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Quote:
I see more and more people NOT using email.
The "death of email" has been predicted for many years, but I don't think there are any statistics to suggest that. Yes, there are many other messaging platforms, but they seem to be in addition to email, not instead of, in terms of overall message volume. I suppose it depends on the business and an individual, but I know for example that here in the USA email marketing is still the gold standard for communicating with people for most businesses and nonprofits. Typically, they also have social media platforms, but nobody wants to receive text messages from companies if they can help it. At least nobody I know, and I know of very few companies that ask to do so. Besides, you can't easily send large and multiple images and fully designed layouts via text, so you end up sending nothing but a link, requiring someone to click through, creating another hurdle to overcome. Sure, many people use it for social conversations, or to communicate with spouse and family, but I suspect the majority of those texts replaced phone calls and not emails. When it comes to serious, retrievable, searchable, actionable, and storeable messaging email is king for most businesses, government agencies, etc. I suspect that email will continue to be used that way for quite awhile, while various messaging platforms continue to thrive for short, social, and less intricate messages. One huge problem is that many messaging platforms don't communicate with each other, whereas you know that someone probably has a phone number and an email address that you can reach. That alone will keep email going.

Last edited by TenFour : 6 Sep 2017 at 09:07 AM.
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Old 8 Sep 2017, 05:47 AM   #39
rmns2bseen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutchie007 View Post
It is. I see more and more people NOT using email. Even in companies they use more and more whatsapp,Skype or Viber. (replace that last with LINE or Wechat in Asia).
Most people,especialy younger ones do NOT use email anymore. They still have an account...because they have an iphone or an Android cellphone..but hardly use their email account. These are my findings.

If you want to use a larger (free) email service which is NOT Google/Microsoft or Yahoo/AOL...think mail.ru/Yandex or Zoho.

D
In all honesty there are two main reasons I keep email accounts active at all: nostalgia, and they're often required as a contact for various businesses (billing and shipping info).
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Old 8 Sep 2017, 06:31 AM   #40
TenFour
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Hmmm, I just don't see the shift away from email in my own life. I still use it every day, all day at work. I do use SMS and MMS to stay in touch mainly with family, but we also email each other all sorts of stuff. I can't imagine paying for a messaging app, but I do pay for email services and feel like they are a bargain. To me it is one of the core features of the digital age I can't imagine doing without.

I could see rephrasing the question to something like: "What are the most trustworthy free email providers." "Long-term" is important, but you need to trust that the service will also keep your email safe and will perform reliably.
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Old 8 Sep 2017, 01:46 PM   #41
n5bb
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Studies indicate that email use is increasing:
Email Statistics Report 2017 - 2021

I don't see any slowdown myself.

Bill
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Old 9 Sep 2017, 03:25 AM   #42
rmns2bseen
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Originally Posted by n5bb View Post
Studies indicate that email use is increasing:
Email Statistics Report 2017 - 2021

I don't see any slowdown myself.

Bill
Key passage in that PDF:

"While there is increased use of IM, chat, social networking,
and other forms of communication, email continues to show steady growth, as
all forms of online communication require users to have an email address to
access their services. In addition, all e-Commerce transactions (i.e. shopping,
banking, etc.) require a valid email address."

Email's great; I'm not trashing it and I do miss Procmail and Sieve which I spent so much time studying. But times do change.
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Old 25 Oct 2017, 08:04 PM   #43
Tsunami
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Not all of us are wild about FB Messenger, WhatsApp (which I still haven't installed), etc.

I am even a bit frustrated about being forced to install FB Messenger because Facebook no longer has private messaging in their own framework. I sometimes needed to ask people in a FB group a question and added "please email me, I don't have Messenger" ; result: lot of people not understanding and using Messenger anyway. After 15 unread PM's awaiting me without being able to access them, I gave in and installed FB Messenger on my tablet. But I still don't like it (hence I only installed it on my tablet, not on my PC) ; it would never be a replacement for email IMO.

Maybe I'm getting old fashioned, especially with the "millennials" I see everyone staring at their smartphone checking Facebook, WhatsApp etc all the time ...
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Old 27 Oct 2017, 01:53 AM   #44
Dutchie007
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Well nowadays for ME its impossible to communicate with most people....99% of the people I know ONLY use Whatsapp and/or FB messenger!! Most people dont respond anymore to emails. (privately). They DO have an email account....but they just dont use it.

Email more and more is becoming something from the past...in The Nertherlands even official institutions (City halls...hospitals even companies) more and more add a wahtsapp number to their contact details. These are the things which i notice arround here.

Germany (were I also lived) is another ballgame...there the FAX and letter (!) still rules...they are truly lagging behind 15-20 years with digital communication.

The last fax I send was somwere in 2008....! Hardly nobody uses a faxmachine in the Netherlands.

Dutchie,.
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Old 27 Oct 2017, 09:01 PM   #45
krimlin
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For private use, the number of my mails sent per year is going down tremendously, too:
2007: 300
2008: 810
2009: 910
2010: 480
2011: 450
2012: 440
2013: 310
2014: 290
2015: 230
2016: 150

Part of the communication definitely shifted to encrypted messenger services (Wire, Whatsapp, Threema), but as I don't think pressing some keyboard buttons and composing a private email is the best thing I can spend my time with, I'm now using the face-to-face time a bit more efficiently.

So, yes, I'd say email becoming less important, but not obsolete, since I receive several emails a day. This is why I'll too have to think about moving to a free email service or to stay with the paid (and very well working) FastMail, when my subscriptopn ends in 2019.
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