[carterx]

I find myself jumping from one email account to another way to often throughout the day and I have accounts with multiple domains and email services. I use "Mail" at home but when I'm at work I'm blocked by a firewall so I use GMX.net to get around this as it is connected to a number of accounts but still not as smooth as I would like for an online solution.

Any suggestions.

[turtle777]

Email Hosting Services | Pick Up Your Email | mail2web.com

Don't know how good it is, but I bookmarked it a while ago, thinking it could be valuable at some point.

-t

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by carterx 

Any suggestions.

Get some work done?

[lexapro]

gmail does it all

[besson3c]

It's good to have multiple email accounts so that you aren't dependent on only one. You never know when one might be flagging good messages as spam, one might be blacklisted, or be experiencing any other variety of difficulties.

You can consolidate all of your other accounts into a couple main accounts a couple of ways:

- server side redirect rules
- switching from standalone accounts to redirects

However, it sort of sounds like you are getting email clients confused with email accounts? I'm a little confused by your original message, it probably ought to be clarified.

[mdc]

I think the original poster asking for a service which will check all of his email accounts (via POP or IMAP) and list everything they have.

Try Threadsy. (The link provided will get you into their beta).

[carterx]

Originally Posted by mdc 

I think the original poster asking for a service which will check all of his email accounts (via POP or IMAP) and list everything they have.

Try Threadsy. (The link provided will get you into their beta).

This is a pretty cool app. Here are 10 more invites http://bit.ly/7jd1wp

[besson3c]

Threadsy will make their money with ads according to what is on their site. I'd be careful about exposing sensitive information this way.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by mdc 

I think the original poster asking for a service which will check all of his email accounts (via POP or IMAP) and list everything they have.

Try Threadsy. (The link provided will get you into their beta).

I played with threadsy and think it's a confusing mess. Not saying that it is for everybody, but for me it doesn't work. It's also hard to delete your account.

[carterx]

I played around with it more last night and I agree that it's a bit of a confusing mess. It's a great idea but they need a better interface. After testing with 3 gmail accounts and a twitter account I found it to be a bit chunky and slow and does not offer the same options as a regular email service. Again a great idea but so far still using GMX.com to get all my email until I can find another service.

Lets see what else is out there

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Threadsy will make their money with ads according to what is on their site. I'd be careful about exposing sensitive information this way.

Same as with Google. I wouldn't trust a provider that reads and processes all my emails.

-t

[Phileas]

Google does not read your email.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

Google does not read your email.

"Reads" probably isn't the right word. But Google definitely scans them for advertising purposes, which is what I assume turtle meant.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

Google does not read your email.

Of course they do, how do you think they make their money?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

"Reads" probably isn't the right word. But Google definitely scans them for advertising purposes, which is what I assume turtle meant.

Bingo.

-t

[Spheric Harlot]

So does GMX if you have any AdSense ads appearing on your mail viewer?

That would be th exact same thing, right?

[Phileas]

So does macnn btw. The banner ads at the top of the page are content specific.

Google does not read your email. The act of reading implies the premeditated comprehension of meaning.

Google simply matches words to ads, no comprehension of the whole ever takes place. I am not advocating that we should all blindly use gmail and to hell with the consequences - a price-point of free should always be treated with suspicion as far as I am concerned - but I it's also important that we use language correctly.

[besson3c]

Fair enough, they don't literally *read* your email. I figured it was obvious that they don't have human beings reading through millions of mailboxes for fun, but... On the other hand, if they wanted to, I don't see why they couldn't legally speaking. You do not own your GMail mailbox, you do not pay to own it like you do with other companies.

As far as actual usefulness of this information, it is important for people to understand that they might be putting themselves at legal risk putting certain kinds of sensitive information into the hands of a company that will claim ownership over it.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

So does macnn btw. The banner ads at the top of the page are content specific.

Google does not read your email. The act of reading implies the premeditated comprehension of meaning.

Google simply matches words to ads, no comprehension of the whole ever takes place. I am not advocating that we should all blindly use gmail and to hell with the consequences - a price-point of free should always be treated with suspicion as far as I am concerned - but I it's also important that we use language correctly.

Seriously, did you think I thought Google was a person who *literally* read your emails ?

Point is, you have no privacy and rights. They essentially own your email content and can do with it what they want. And yes, same as MacNN. That's way I don't introduce anything really personal and identifiable with my real life persona to 'NN.

I just don't like that they would maintain that much control over my stuff. Emails are real, threads and posts not so much.

-t

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

They essentially own your email content and can do with it what they want.

No, they don't and no, they can't. Where do you get these ideas from?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

No, they don't and no, they can't. Where do you get these ideas from?

Where does it say in the user agreement that you have the right to not have your email contents mined, and any sort of privacy rights? In accepting the data mining, you are agreeing to share the contents of your emails with Google for them to use within the confines of what is legal (i.e. they won't sell any credit card numbers you post to your account or something like that). However, the ownership issue is important. You do not own your mailbox, and therefore you need to be careful about exposing information that you do not own and/or agree to only use in a particular way as defined by some sort of user/privacy agreement.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Where does it say in the user agreement that you have the right to not have your email contents mined, and any sort of privacy rights? In accepting the data mining, you are agreeing to share the contents of your emails with Google for them to use within the confines of what is legal

Having key words in your mail matched against ad messages is how google pays for the service - that's public knowledge. If that's a deal breaker for you, go elsewhere. I thought that was understood.

But the content of your emails is yours and yours alone, to do with as you wish.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

Having key words in your mail matched against ad messages is how google pays for the service - that's public knowledge. If that's a deal breaker for you, go elsewhere. I thought that was understood.

But the content of your emails is yours and yours alone, to do with as you wish.

And what do you base this statement on?

[Phileas]

Amongst other things, the copyright law. Seriously, why exactly are we having this conversation again?

[besson3c]

Copyright law? Who is saying that they would publish your work as their own?

We're having this conversation because you seem to be inferring that Google cannot and will not read your email. My point is that what they do with your email is anybody's guess. When you allow them to data mine, you give them permission to go through the content of your email and do with it what they wish so long as they stick to their user agreement. It doesn't matter whether there are human eyes or computer algorithms going through your email, the point is they are allowed to go through it as they please - you do not own your mailbox.

As far as what this means to the end user, for most people very little, except do not put yourself in danger by storing sensitive information in your account.

[Phileas]

You're jumping from argument to argument, with little in the way of coherence. Quite frankly, you're confusing the hell out of me.

I said that the content of your mail is yours, to do with as you wish.
You asked me what I'd base that answer on.
I said, amongst others, the copyright law.

Now you're jumping to the next argument. Can we finish one train of thought before starting the next one?

Fact:
You own the content of your mailbox. You can delete it, publish it, forward it, take it away, do as you please with it. Nobody, including google, can stop you.

Fact:
Google does not read your email, if we use the word read as it is commonly understood, as in, reading means the comprehension of meaning.

Fact:
Google pays for the upkeep of gmail by matching keywords in your mail to keywords in their database of advertisers, delivering what they hope to be content relevant advertising. That's the deal. The deal is well published, if it doesn't appeal to you, or if you can't get yourself to agree to the terms, use something else. It's still a reasonably free country, nobody is holding a gun to your head and is forcing you to drink the google Kool Aid.

Fact:
Matching algorithms are commonplace. Posting on forums, anti spam solutions, etc, etc, they all use it. There's nothing new here, and nothing evil.

So, to finish this:
Services need to be paid for.
Google pays for gmail using a well published system that matches ads to content.
The law of the land still apply. Terms of use < The Law.
Google doesn't own your content, in any way, shape or form.
If you don't like the way it works, go elsewhere.

[besson3c]

We are talking past each other, I think...

I agree with all of the facts you've laid out. However, Google does read your email, if by read you include having their software read your data. I think we are just getting up on the word "read" in this context - i.e. human eyeballs reading vs. algorithms sifting through mailboxes. I'm referring to the latter. Furthermore, from the Wikipedia article:

Privacy
Google automatically scans e-mails to add context-sensitive advertisements to them. Privacy advocates raised concerns that the plan involved scanning their personal, assumed private, e-mails, and that this was a security problem. Allowing e-mail content to be read, even by a computer, raises the risk that the expectation of privacy in e-mail will be reduced. Furthermore, e-mail that non-subscribers choose to send to Gmail accounts is scanned by Gmail as well, even though those senders never agreed to Gmail's terms of service or privacy policy. Google can change its privacy policy unilaterally and Google is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to make dossiers on individuals. However, most e-mail systems make use of server-side content scanning in order to check for spam.[44][45]
Privacy advocates also regard the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies as problematic. Google has the ability to combine information contained in a person's e-mail messages with information from Internet searches. Google has not confirmed how long such information is kept or how it can be used. One of the concerns is that it could be of interest to law enforcement agencies. More than 30 privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service until these issues are resolved.[46]
Gmail's privacy policy contains the clause: "residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems". Google points out that Gmail adheres to most industry-wide practices. Google has stated that they will "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical."[47][48]
Google defends its position by citing their use of email-scanning to the user's benefit. Google states that Gmail refrains from displaying ads next to potentially sensitive messages such as those that mention tragedy, catastrophe, or death.[49]]

The terms can be changed unilaterally at any time, meaning that you have no say in the matter as far as what Google does with your content. Yes, it is true that the law trumps the terms of use, but it is not illegal to do all sorts of things so long as you embed a clause in the user agreement.

While Google does not literally own your content, they own your mailbox. The *data* is theirs, and this is at least as valuable to them as the content itself. Your data can be read and analyzed as Google wishes so long as it complies with the law and their user agreement, they can sell this information, and they can change their terms unilaterally.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Copyright law? Who is saying that they would publish your work as their own?

We're having this conversation because you seem to be inferring that Google cannot and will not read your email. My point is that what they do with your email is anybody's guess. When you allow them to data mine, you give them permission to go through the content of your email and do with it what they wish so long as they stick to their user agreement. It doesn't matter whether there are human eyes or computer algorithms going through your email, the point is they are allowed to go through it as they please - you do not own your mailbox.

As far as what this means to the end user, for most people very little, except do not put yourself in danger by storing sensitive information in your account.

How is this different from using ANY email service whatsoever on the planet? In fact, MOST of them actually DO read your email, because they sort out the viruses for you.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

How is this different from using ANY email service whatsoever on the planet? In fact, MOST of them actually DO read your email, because they sort out the viruses for you.

At the SMTP gateway level, yes - a one time deal, but there is no data being saved or collected, just some headers of the message being manipulated. It would be too expensive to data mine each email message as it arrives in real time anyway.

The key difference is that with an email provider you pay for you are paying them to host your mailbox for you. They are covering their costs with the money you are paying them, and unless stated in the user agreement, they are not mining your data. In this case, i.e. the standard user agreement, it is strictly illegal for them to use any sort of software to mine your data or to perform any other sort of technique that collects data by going through individual messages - whether aggregate like Google or individual reports on mailboxes. They cannot change their user agreement unilaterally, and some/most providers also backup mail and assume responsibility for the preservation of your data.

[turtle777]

Well said, Besson.

It comes down to this: if people here have no problems with their personal emails being data mined, fine, Gmail is great for you.

I just hate the idea that my name is connected to all kinds of things, and that someone creates a database with this information. In the end, I have no control and right over the data. No my cup of tea.

-t

[besson3c]

In addition to the whole privacy thing, so many of the hosting providers are in a sort of arms race for offering cheap email service. Mind you, many of these same providers have serious reliability or security problems, there is always that tradeoff, and Google generally does very well in this regard, but if you are patient enough to find a good commercial email provider that has a nice balance of cheap/reliable/secure, there are often other advantages:

- offsite backups
- custom domains, the ability to create multiple email addresses (standalone or redirects) prefixed with your domain
- server side filters, in some cases
- support
- accessed via a standard, open protocol (POP/IMAP)

However, if you are into web based email obviously GMail/Hotmail/Yahoo is much nicer than Squirrelmail/Roundcube Mail.