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Sign Up for a Free E-mail Box - Your "Junk mail" Box

If you do not already have a junk mail box, an e-mail address that receives your junk mail, then sign up now! There are many free e-mail services that you can use to receive your junk mail. By having a junk mail box you can protect your real e-mail from possible malicious attacks, junk mail, mass mailings, and choose when to read the e-mail rather than weeding through the important information from the junk mail. I consider most mass mailings the same as junk mail, regardless of whether they originated from friends or not.

Some e-mail services are based on the web, others have POP3 access (you can receive e-mail from programs like Outlook and Outlook Express), and some have both web and POP3 capabilities. Remember, free usually has a price and that price is in advertisements.

The three free services I like are Hotmail.com by Microsoft, Softhome.net, and Juno.com. All have positives and negatives. Services like www.Hotmail.com are web based only, which means you must be on the Internet to read, compose and send email. Great to use if you do not have a laptop and travel. I check my Hotmail account whenever I am ready and do not have to download it daily. However, if you are an anti-Microsoft fanatic, then you can bet they will gather lots of information from you and use it. They will know your habits, underwear size, and preferences in no time.

Section 1

Protection from
Junk Mail

Sign Up for a
Free E-mail Box
A "Junk mail" Box

Special Notice
for AOL Users

Give Your
E-mail Address to Others Sparingly

Carefully Screen Internet Sites that Ask For Your E-mail Use Your
"Junk mail" Box

Setting Up Your "Junk mail" Account in Outlook Express

Sample Letter to Send Friends
Who Send Junk mail

Section 2

I like www.Softhome.net which has a decent service. Not only can you access your e-mail via the web, but you can POP3 and SMTP your e-mail too, which means you can receive and send your e-mail from programs like Outlook and Outlook Express on your computer. They have little to no advertisements, and have been around since 1996 with good reviews. As a matter of fact, I can not remember one advertisement in the last six months. The only negatives include a difficulty connecting if you are POPing your e-mail, the service requires Internet access, and you must receive e-mail before you can send e-mail through their SMTP service. Softhome.net offers the same basic e-mail service as Hotmail and more.

Finally, www.Juno.com has been the leader in free e-mail for years. Benefits include e-mail, even if you do NOT have a connection to the Internet, off-line reading and composing e-mail, and several phone numbers throughout the nation ensure the e-mail connection is a local phone call for most users. The Juno program fits on a floppy disk and therefore, easily given to someone to install on their computer, even if they can not connect to the Internet. The instructions are easy to follow. The only downside, you can not send or receive attachments, it is strictly text email. For some who have been bitten by a virus, this may be more of a positive then a negative, as you will read in the section, Protection from Viruses.

For more free e-mail information click here www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/8015/free.html. Follow the instructions on the free e-mail site to sign up for your e-mail account. I explain how to set up your POP3 (receive) and SMTP (send) junk mail account in Outlook Express a little later in this section or by clicking here.

Protecting Others
from Junk Mail

Section 3

Protection
from Viruses