There are a lot of e-mail options out there to choose from! Whew! If you don’t believe me, just go to Google and type in “Free E-mail Service” and you’ll get more results than you’ll know what to do with. The big names will come up first, G-Mail, Hotmail / Windows Live Mail, Yahoo!, AOL, etc. and lots of other simple free e-mail sites, usually web-based. You may get e-mail addresses that come with your internet service. For example, I’ve got a Verizon DSL e-mail account that I never use because it’s lame. I’ve got an old e-mail address with my mom’s cable internet service I never check, because I don’t live at her house anymore. One of the big hazards with getting these free e-mail accounts is that your personal data often gets used to send you targeted advertising (Note: I’m not saying the sites I listed do that, but they might). You essentially sign over your rights to privacy with a lot of services just by virtue of having it hosted on servers you don’t control.
But who really has the time or resources to run their own e-mail server? (Me, but I’m not most people.) In fact, who really wants to bother with spending a second thought worrying about whether their e-mail is private and secure? E-mail should just work, and not require a degree just to be safe online.
If you’re worried about your e-mail privacy, there’s a company called Privacy Harbor that focuses heavily on privacy rather than advertising, and keeps your information away from advertiser’s prying eyes. They even have a free account you can sign up for, with some upgrade options if you’d like more features. The best part is, especially since the whole Facebook-Owns-Your-Content debacle, you own the rights to your content in your e-mail, not the company. They have excellent support options available, and they even support large attachments (a huge plus, in my opinion).
