A Second 'Opaque' E-Mail Address?

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Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

What is the best way to get an 'opaque' e-mail address?

I'm sick to death of everything I buy or sign-up for on the internet requiring my personal e-mail address and then that linking into everything else on the internet...

...like getting used chewing-gum on your hands!

Isn't there just some e-mail account I can get without it linking into Google, or Skype, or Twitter, or YouTube and without it trying to sell me a pension or check if I'm owed PPI damages?

Original post

Member for

14 years

Posts: 4,996

Whenever I need to give an email address, for whatever reason, I have a number of accounts which I can use.
Yahoo or Hotmail being the ones I mostly use. They have pretty good spam filtering.

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

Not sure that 'hotmail' exists any more, they are now owned by Google as 'g-mail'; and that is part of the problem.

As soon as you use g-mail on an iPad it assumes that you have exclusive access to that iPad and starts trying to link-in all the apps that are on it, such as YouTube...

...it seems to want to set your default preferences to all things 'Google' and blank-out everything else!

Which is a problem because an iPad is an Apple device and that wants to set all your default settings to 'Apple' and blank-out everything else! For example on this forum, opened in Google, I never get any sound with linked YouTube videos...

...strangely it works fine on Safari! :rolleyes:

It is even worse if you have an iPhone too.

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

'Yahoo' are exactly that.....a complete bunch of 'yahoos'!

I have 'Yahoo' through my BT account and it has proved nothing but trouble; e-mails are constantly being 'lost' or they simply vanish without trace. It once took thirty-six hours for an e-mail I sent to reach somebody I know who also has a Yahoo account!

The spam-filter is also awful; I have to log-on to Yahoo directly to see what is in it and to empty it (the pre-filter you don't see by using 'Outlook') and when I do I have to wade through pages of adverts and 'news' about z-list celebrities and how much weight they've lost / gained since they had the baby!

Yahoo also tends to spam-filter-out genuine e-mails just based on the subject line, which is great, so long as you're not actually trying to send or receive e-mails about mortgages, investments or insurance!

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 4,875

Google Mail and Hotmail are different entities. Hotmail is a Microsoft bag of spanners and has been rebranded under the MS 'Outlook' banner. Google is just a many tentacled thing that demands compliance and is painful to be involved with.

I've not had to set up guarded services like this for a while but you used to be able to get free accounts with a Canadian outfit called 'Hushmail' that were pretty well segregated from the mainstream commercial streams.....I think that is now a pay to play service now though.

GMX do free webmail accounts as well (www.gmx.com) that look comprehensive in their features and should be 'off-grid' enough that it doesnt get caught up in the Google account bundling.

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

Didn't know that about Hotmail or even that it was still going; my problem is that I'd like different and completely separate e-mails for work, social, and, most importantly, a local club I'm involved with that means sending and receiving dozens of e-mails a week...

...Apple / Google seem to be under the impression that everything I do is all part of the same activity so it doesn't matter if all communication is blended together and any device I use needs to ping-away constantly as utterly irrelevant texts and e-mails flood into the device...

...honestly, do the designers of these devices only get three e-mails a day?

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 4,875

Do you have a domain registry for the local club you are in?. If so you can get free mail accounts from outfits like Zoho based on that domain. If you were the secretary of the creakingdoor fan club, for example, you may register the domain name 'creakingdoor.org'. If you have that domain name you can set up mail accounts - [email]admin@creakingdoor.org[/email]; [email]cd@creakingdoor.org[/email] etc, etc. That should give you mailboxes with limited exposure to the general background noise.

PM me if you need a hand with anything like that?

Member for

14 years

Posts: 4,996

When I said Hotmail. I meant Outlook. Accounts automatically migrated there. Either way it still works ok for me.
I've also never had any problems with Yahoo mail. Now and again I also use DCEmail, that works well.
I think I also still have an account at Mail.com, if I could remember how to log on :)

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

I used to have a hotmail account years ago and it proved very useful; I was able to compartmentalise all the e-mail traffic for certain activities and any replies would arrive back in the hotmail inbox...

...now Microsoft have dragged everybody back under their control it seems and thus defeating the idea of hotmail.

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 9,739

PM me if you need a hand with anything like that?

Thanks for that; that may be the way forward.